2020: The Worst Year Ever
The silent tragedy of 2020 nobody's talking about
“2020 just needs to end.”
This seems to be the unanimous attitude of the general public and social media meme-makers.
Make no mistake about it:
it’s been a _______ (fill-in-the-blank: rough? crazy? sad? hard? exhausting? long?) year.
But I can’t help but hear the words of my beloved high school French teacher & modern-day Rumi in all her harsh-but-true German wisdom echoing in my mind:
“You’re wishing your life away.”
(Longing for the future is a common lament among high schoolers; thus, this was a frequently uttered urge to remain in the present, the here, the now.)
It’s not that I want more social injustice, political unrest, protests, cooties & cancellations, or that I’m particularly enjoying these trying times. It’s just that, the further I try & extract myself from the present moment— what is— the more unsettled I feel.
Wishing 2020 away doesn’t actually make it go away.
And it doesn’t actually feel good, either.
We don’t have to love it, but we do have to live it, whether we like it or not.
Yes, I want to go masklessly listen to live music with a thousand other people again.
Yes, I want senseless shootings to cease.
Yes, I want equality and fairness and kindness and peace.
But to keep wishing things away is to attempt to not live through them— which is not only an impossible feat, but a deeply detrimental gift should it be delivered, for in the living is where all the good stuff happens.
The hard stuff, yes.
The scary stuff, yes.
The potentially unfair, confusing, discouraging stuff, yes.
But also—
the deeply meaningful stuff.
the vulnerable, magical, connective human stuff.
the important conversation stuff.
the growth stuff.
In any case, 2020 will end in nearly 3 months— again, without any effort or wishing from us— and without a doubt, 2021 will usher in new challenges & uncomfortable confrontations and we’ll probably be right back in the middle of wishing our lives away for some other reasons.
But the point of life, the way I see it, is not to get through unscathed, but to learn from the burns and link arms through the flames.
If I had to pick a single reason why 2020 could be “the worst year ever,” it is the fact that rather than linking up, we are cowering in and wishing away so many opportunities to truly do life together.
This is, to me, the silent tragedy of “the worst year ever.”