The year that changed everything and set Brits on a different path

On 30 December, the penultimate day of 2020, Sam Adams, 53, boarded a flight at Gatwick airport to start a new life in Lanzarote. The life coach from Brighton has had, by anyone’s standards, a difficult year. In February her 10-year-old Jack Russell pug, Teddy, suffered heart failure and had to be put down, then in July her father, Royston, 87, died from cancer. Finally, in November, the cherry on the cake saw her divorce finalised – the conclusion of a year-long separation from her partner of seven years. These personal turmoils have all played out against the backdrop of a pandemic that has seen 60,000 dead and unemployment figures hit 1.6 million.

Adams is, by her own admission, someone who copes in times of adversity, an optimist when the chips are down. But she says the combination of these testing circumstances saw her reach breaking point. For the last 12 days of her father’s life she moved into her parent’s house to help her mum, Violet, cope with her dad’s declining health. She slept next to him in his bed, watching TV and talking to him, even when he was so sedated he could not respond. 

One night she recalls sitting on the edge of the bed in the early hours praying for Roy’s pain to end. “My dad was not an affectionate man, he never told me he loved me (although I knew he did),” she tells The Independent. “I remember crying about Teddy and he reached out his hand and said ‘I’m really sorry about your little man’, and I thought god that has taken you 87 years.” From then Adams vowed to live her life to the fullest – to help others but not compromise on her goals. The day before we speak she listed her home on Airbnb in preparation for going abroad.

“Even in a pandemic you can change things,” she says. “New beginnings come from bad endings and what has happened this year has definitely made me look at my life. Which of those [events] has been most significant? My dad? My divorce? The pandemic? I’m not sure. But I know I need to go and get on with [my life].”

To distil the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on the world will be the work of experts for decades to come: at its most basic level it has, so far, seen the deaths of 1.5 million people worldwide. 

Dig slightly deeper and the economic and cultural ramifications have been vast. In the UK alone 2.7m workers have been furloughed, the country plunged into the deepest recession on record, and workers leaving offices en masse in the biggest working-from-home experiment ever. But what about socially? Has the virus changed who we are as people, how we operate as communities, and what we want from our lives? 

Early research suggests that many Brits, like Adams, already have an appetite for changing their lives. Statistics from the Office for National Statistics  (ONS) found 28 per cent of adults are planning huge life changes. Of those, 42 per cent want to change work, 35 per cent want to change where they live and 38 per cent want to change their relationships. More than one in four felt some part of their life had changed for the better in 2020 and half were enjoying the slower pace.

Other surveys have indicated similar views: YouGov found only 9 per cent want a total return to the “old way” of doing things, citing social and environmental changes as crucial. More than half (51 per cent of people) have noticed cleaner air, and 27 per cent have seen more wildlife. While 40 per cent have felt a stronger sense of local community. 

A sense of community is undoubtedly a theme that has emerged from the pandemic. Over 5,000,000 Brits volunteered for the first time in the March lockdown. The NHS Clap for Carers was a clear display of unity and respect for frontline key workers. The huge sum of £32m raised by Captain Sir Tom Moore, who went on to gain celebrity status, and campaigning footballer Marcus Rashford – heroes for our times – was in stark contrast to the way other celebrities appeared increasingly out of touch by throwing lavish parties on private islands. What people wanted from their icons, how we saw society reflected in their behaviour, was changing. Even the John Lewis Christmas advert chose the theme of kindness to encapsulate the year gone by.

But this kindness wasn’t just a successful marketing campaign, for some the resurgence of community unity was a springboard to reassess where they fitted in. Sue Cross*, 61, from Birmingham, was one of the 7,000 ex-nurses who decided to change the path of her life and answer the call by the government for recently retired medics to go back to work. Prior to the pandemic, Cross saw 2020 as a year in which she could spend more time with her children but after seeing the need for front-line workers she couldn’t help but go back. “You think you know where you are heading, and we all make plans but life has a way of disrupting them and you need to roll with it,” she says. 

For others this period of change has seen them leave jobs they have had for years, rather than return to them. Saurav Dutt, 38, has worked as a business consultant in the City of London for years but he says the anxiety generated by this year has caused him to embrace a different future. Now he has plans to become an author and has signed up to a writer’s residence in Tahiti, nearly 10,000 miles from the UK. He dreams of his books being turned into scripts and being picked up by Netflix India. After the residency he will travel to Mumbai and Hollywood.

“Quite frankly, before all this [pandemic] happened I would have talked myself out of pursuing these ventures but right now this is not the time to be wasting your life on self-doubt,” he says. Like many people, Dutt had relatives who died this year. “It made me realise every day, every week, every month counts, that opportunities that you think are waiting for you can be cut off at a moment's notice....time waits for no man and that's especially true in a pandemic.” 

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It was 2020 that also helped Mark Gregory, 30, from West Yorkshire, decide both his career and his home was no longer for him. Gregory, who worked as an English teacher at a private school in Germany from 2017 until March this year, has taken the time to retrain as a celebrant for funerals and weddings. He was inspired after his mum’s death in September 2019 when he gave a eulogy and felt a calling to pursue it as a full-time job. “It was a breakthrough year for us as a family in many ways,” he says. “I think a lot of people will be in the same boat and will hopefully emerge from this really strange year more focused and determined to get what they want.”

Others have retained their jobs but have decided that they needed to address longstanding issues of work-life balance. Research from 2019 found that workers in the UK put in the longest hours in the EU, working an average of 42 hours a week, compared with 40 for other countries. This has only gotten worse during the pandemic with 42 per cent of people polled saying remote working made it harder to leave the office behind when they were living and working in the same four walls. This is especially the case for women who are reportedly enduring a double burden of work and unpaid labour in the home. 

Eszter Kovacs, 31, from Chiswick decided that she needed to uproot her life in England before the second lockdown. She decided to move to Bern, Switzerland, in order to better establish work-life boundaries and pursue her hobbies of hiking and furniture restoration. She has also changed working policies including a no-meetings Friday and group yoga with her employees. “I was feeling the strain mentally, I felt I needed to be in a place that calmed me and enabled me to think clearly. I also wanted to try new things. I suppose it ignited my thirst for adventure.”

Since moving, Kovacs says she already has much more time on her hands and is no longer engulfed by the rat race. “I don’t feel anxious, I sleep really well and I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time...I think the pandemic woke me up and made me realise that I wasn’t living the lifestyle I really wanted or needed,” she says.

As well as shifting ambitions in the professional arena, the pandemic has seeped into the most personal aspects of our lives. Prior to lockdown, relationship experts predicted booms in divorce rates, modelled on similar annual patterns after Christmas when families are forced to spend time together. In September, Citizens Advice said divorce inquiries had indeed risen. Views on the CA divorce page on the first weekend in September were up 25 per cent compared with the same date in 2019. 

Hannah Smith*, 28, from south-east England, went through a breakup with her partner of two years after the relationship was “tested” by lockdown. They initially had to move back in with Smith’s parents in Sussex before managing to secure a two-bed flat, but she says it wasn’t to be. “The pandemic confused feelings, I found myself blaming our daily bickerings on not having our own space, the context of the pandemic clouded my judgement,” she says. The pair eventually broke up on her birthday. This combined with work strain changed the course of Smith’s life. “It took a very public breakdown in the Tesco fruit and vegetable aisle to realise that I needed something drastic to change.”

Smith is now planning to move to Scotland, to work remotely and do acting classes. “There is no doubt that 2020 has significantly changed the course of my life. [It] has taught me you really have no idea what’s around the corner,” she explains. “Despite the heartache, mental health battles and pains I don’t regret anything. This year has taught me so much about the things that matter: your friends, your family, your community and ultimately, being true to yourself.” 

She is not the only one to have learned that proximity to family takes precedence above all else. One poll found a third of people say seeing their family means more than ever before. Jill Heller, 26, originally from New York but living in Hackney for the last two-and-a-half years, has decided it is time to move back to America to be closer to family. “With lockdowns in both the UK and US, it's been hard to be so far from home,” she says. 

“I’m really not looking forward to leaving London but moving to NYC is the only relatively stable thing I can do for myself at the moment so...here we go.” Prior to the pandemic she had no plans to go home and concedes this never would have been on the agenda without coronavirus. “I’ve been forced to think about what really matters to me and whether I can still prioritise a city over where my family are.”

For generations to come, the pandemic of 2020 will be analysed; government policy scrutinised, economic decisions questioned, and children wondering in earnest – did you really all get locked in your houses for weeks on end? 

For those who lived through it, it is hard to know whether we will develop a warped nostalgia for the days indoors or a relief that we were the survivors. The lucky ones. And for many Brits, it seems, Covid-19 might have been the wake-up call they needed to change their life, for a better shot at the future.