Australian and California wildfires. Impeachment of the president. Tensions with Iran. The death of Kobe Bryant. The COVID-19 pandemic. The economic downturn that resulted. The death of George Floyd. The rise of the BLM movement. The death of Chadwick Boseman. The death of RBG. All are history defining moments. All overwhelming, yet important news.

It seems as if every day brings somber headlines. Every new injustice in the world seems to be a new monster that we have to face. It is easy to get lost in all the chaos. In the midst of it all, it is also easy to find an entity to blame. “2020 is the worst year ever” is a sentence you’ve probably heard, or even said aloud yourself.

Is 2020 really our worst year?

This question requires a look into a general experience of the past decade, not taking into account the personal, academic, or professional lows that one has experienced. However, there seems to be a unanimous hatred of this year. There may be a few factors that have contributed to this.

When looking back, we must consider the fact that quarantine kept the nation stuck at home, watching the media for any signs of change. News was a constant in our lives, seemingly being the only real marker of time. With our current access to technology, avoiding being flooded with news was relatively impossible. 

Quarantine kept us on our toes, ready for the next tragedy. In the hopes of being prepared for the next incident, we became obsessed with updating ourselves until it was difficult to keep things in perspective. As a result, it seemed as if we lived through an entire decade’s worth of bad news in just one year. 

Collectively speaking, this year has amassed into one of shared suffering and grief. But it has also brought about a shared sense of empathy. It is easier to understand one another in this year than ever before. We have faced boredom, uncertainty, and anxiety together in quarantine. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, we learned to re-learn history and understand and challenge systems that perpetuate racism. But these systems and this history has existed before our acknowledgement of it. 

Understanding our world is the first step in the process of change. It is up to us to decide whether we want to linger on the fact that 2020 has changed life for us, or if we want to embrace the changes and move forward for a more just world.