The great comeback of 2021 is surely coming, at least according to the new picture I have in my head, and it will be led and fed by the idea of pent-upness. There’s so much pent-up desire for joy out there. Surely it will begin to explode in late spring, with vaccines more available and a spreading sense that things are easing off, and be fully anarchic by summer.

Growth will come back, people will burst out, it’s going to be exciting. Businesses will start to come back to office buildings and see if that works. The great newsrooms will be full and bustling with noise again, and the young hire will be given a desk, not a Zoom link. We will call old friends for dinner and meet at crowded restaurants and everyone will be grateful for each other. Some people will go a little crazy and say how about a long weekend in Paris, and we’ll do it and not only for fun but to see that Paris is still there.

There will be a hunger to be out there again, en masse again. On the streets of my city at night it was once fairly common to see glamorous men in tuxedos and women in satin shawls. We are going to see them hailing a car and on their way to a party again. The young will come out of their apartments and flood into the streets dressed in all the colors in the world.