Nothing anyone writes about 2020 can capture what it really felt like. Human memory doesn't want to hold onto horrors. We want to look away, look forward, move on. If we don't do that we risk sinking into existential dread, drowning in the realities that rise over our heads.
Because it was tragic, at a level we wouldn't believe if someone put it in a movie plot. It is still tragic. Even as I rejoiced in the amazing feeling of having coffee with a friend in a coffee shop--something I took for granted in January 2020, something I treasure as a special moment now--I have to live within these realities.
We still have deep, divisive, damaging racism embedded in everything about the way our world is structured. We've had it for far longer than white people like me recognized, even as we benefited.
We still have the devouring, thoughtless habits of careless consumption that will kill our species. Not the planet--it will survive, in some shape. The Earth doesn't need us to go on. We've lit the planet on fire and we're pouring more gasoline on it every day.
We still have the violent, strange, and polarizing politics that made the simple act of getting a shot--something most of us experienced as a child and yeah, I'm glad I didn't get measles, mumps, whooping cough, or polio, aren't you?--a dividing line.
We still have the yawning chasm between the wealth of a Jeff Bezos--who earns more in one second than some people make in an entire month of hard and thankless work that exposes them to the risk of a potentially deadly disease--and the desperation felt by someone who has to call the back seat of a car their bedroom because that's all they have left.
Historians describe turning points, which are easier to recognize in hindsight than in the moment. I have one particular turning point in mind, though there are many.
I remember my anger when 9/11 happened and I listened to then-President George Bush give us a rousing speech--about why we needed to show that we couldn't be beaten by going shopping.
I'm the daughter of a World War II veteran. I know that when we were asked as a nation to rise to the challenge of the moment by changing our way of life we were able to grow victory gardens, save tin foil, reduce consumption at home so resources could go to our soldiers overseas. 9/11 could have been a turning point to ask that we reduce our dependence on foreign oil so we wouldn't end up making more enemies in the Middle East. We didn't have to put the lives of our own citizens and others into the tanks of our ever-larger vehicles.
We could have committed to a cleaner and greener future. We could have risen to the challenge. We still could.
And if we did that we would also be doing something to confront the terrible legacies of racism. We would be acknowledging and then reducing the greater burdens of pollution and death by traffic violence created by building an economic structure that asks people to spend more and more time driving farther and farther. We would be making healthier places for everyone. We would treat this lost year as a portal to the future that we want.
When I say "we" here, by the way, I mean "we white people who still hold the majority of decision-making power in this country in every sector." Because "we" is me. "We" is you if you're not speaking up, speaking out, taking action. If we can't collectively learn from this lost year then we have truly lost our future.
