We have come only halfway through 2020 and it already feels like a decade has passed.
Make that several decades - and maybe make a drink while you are at it. I cannot be the only one trying to get my bearings.
This is a year when life is whooshing forward at warp speed, like the Star Ship Enterprise flying through space on her five-year mission, and yet so much has been placed on hold. It is a year that wants to hark back to 1918, 1929 and 1968: Protests on top of a pandemic inside of an economic disaster adjacent to an upcoming election endured by an anxious public led by an impetuous man who wants us to believe it will all just "go away."
You may be fortunate enough to avoid Covid-19, but we are all experiencing some kind of vertigo.
As the teenagers would say, 2020 was already extra before the pandemic hit, although most of us would be hard pressed to remember a time this year when the specter of the pandemic did not dominate our lives. Massive Australian bushfires. The botched count in the Iowa caucuses. President Trump acquitted on the articles of impeachment. An Iranian missile attack on bases housing Unitef States troops. Kobe Bryant's helicopter crashing into a mountain. And that was all during the first two months.
It became a season of retreat where most of us, against our instincts, have tried to watch the world from a distance. The dispatches arrive on screens that serve as windows to a world gone sideways. There is a segment of society still going to bars and beaches and getting haircuts without donning masks or gloves or apparent concern for fellow human beings. Those "happy-go-luckys" do not seem to believe in the science that says social distancing and protective gear will save lives and flatten a curve that looks like a steep stairway to heaven. Especially as numbers began to rise after everything reopened.
When we finally emerge on the other side - whatever that looks like - we will have a lot of work to do. As we go through the mental scrapbooking in an attempt to take stock, what are the images or moments or actions that will best define what we have just survived? Here is what that catalog might include so far:
Health-care workers in head-to-toe protective gear.
The long lines at the food banks.
The banging of pots at 7 p.m. or howling at 8 p.m., like they do in my small town.
The face masks.
The ventilators.
The elbow bumps.
A family talking to grandma through a closed window at the nursing home.
Mass graves for Coronavirus victims.
Political rallies despite calls for social distancing.
A presidential candidate speaking to the world from his basement.
A president barking at the world on Twitter.
Funerals where no one can get out of their car.
Empty subways.
Empty stadiums.
Silent theaters.
Grounded airplanes.
Silenced trains.
The grocery store with empty shelves that used to be filled with paper products or dried beans.
Shuttered museums.
Closed schools.
Amusement parks and zoos silenced.
The essential workers on the early bus.
The grocery cashiers behind plexiglass.
The police in riot gear.
The tear gas in the streets.
The attorney general in the park.
The National Guard.
Falling statues.
Burning buildings.
Protesters. Oh, so many protesters. Some carrying signs. Some carrying guns.
The jogger hunted by the pickup truck.
The Wendy's parking lot.
The violin-playing introvert stopped by police who injected him with a dose of ketamine.
A knee in the neck.
A face on the pavement.
The gasp - "I can't breathe" - from the victims of police violence.
From the victims of Covid-19.
From the masses facing a stack of bills they cannot pay.
A national coin shortage.
The gloved hand.
The raised fist.
The raised Bible.
Black Lives Matter in massive yellow letters.
Black. With a capital B.
These are all what we, in the news media, call shared experiences. Events that have been seared into our collective memories and will forever be embedded on our individual brains as part of our personal experiences. Like 9/11. We all remember where we were and what we were doing when it all happened.
It is easier to focus on the intensity of a single moment, because it feels less relentless that way. It is unrelenting, nonetheless.
There are blessed moments of whimsy, resilience and character. We spy them in our partners and spouses and co-workers - and in perfect strangers. We send up a little mantra of gratitude when we witness them.
We see how confinement has stoked creativity: we see choirs singing together in a trellis of little videos, we hear DJs who turn the world into their dance floor, we "go to" Zoom parties, and we watch Tik Tok recordings of families dancing in unison with skill and abandon as if James Brown and Fred Astaire had traveled back to Earth for private lessons.
We have taught ourselves how to adapt. How to survive. How to sacrifice. How to find laughter despite despair. How to find courage. How to remain tethered in our collective solitude, which has been so much easier for some than for others. There are too many without food. Too many have lost their jobs. Too many will face eviction. Hopefully, that will not be another outrage normalized.
As we celebrated the anniversary of our independence this year, that word served up extra helpings of irony. We are all chained to new rules, new mandates, new markings that tell us where to stand, where not to sit. We are also realizing as a nation that we are chained to a difficult history that has caught up with us in the midst of a global standstill. A long-armed ghost that demands a reckoning.
This virus reminds us that we are connected to each other. Our history is shared. Our survival depends on collective action to protect ourselves, to protect others, to protect the idea of tomorrow or next month or next year.
But first we have to get through the rest of this year with our vision clear.
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