How 2020 Could Be Our Worst Year Yet as a Society

Katherine Pellegrino ’23

Contributing Writer

With only three months into 2020, you would think the world wouldn’t have that much to talk about. But even with its short lived standing, 2020 may have already passed recent years in its chaos. With the emergence of deadly international disease and a presidential race that seems more like a playground fight, it seems as if now more than ever what the world needs is to unite. But what do we choose to do instead? Turn on one another. 

2020 has brought a new level of selfishness to light that has made us, as humans, inhumane. We have become so numb to chaos that we don’t even recognize it unless it is being thrown directly into our faces. Previous years have opened doors and handed us megaphones to speak our truths, but now, as people step up to speak, the audience is already bored and has left the building.

And in whom do we put our faith to keep us safe? Our president? The politicians whose campaigns stand on the ruins of their opponents? If 2020 has taught us anythin,  it is that the only person we can trust is ourselves. I’m no political expert, to be sure, but I do know that if it all does really go south, there’s no way I’m jumping into a lifeboat with the people I’ve seen destroying each other to feed their own need to win. Do you really think they’re going to share their water with me if they can’t even share the same opinions on healthcare? 

Even so, we follow their lead, we put them on pedestals and trust them with our freedom. We hear a disease that is destroying an entire continent is traveling, and suddenly anyone descended from those people is carrying it and must be avoided. We are told that our rights must be protected at all cost, but we don’t protect students as they sit in class. Our priorities are all off, and we don’t even realize it.

In a short three months, we’ve become robots to the system. It’s as if we are all on a roller coaster, being fed information with no way off the ride and no way to escape the continuous suffering that it seems to promise. We can say the people controlling the ride are making us like this, but in reality, we sat in the seats and buckled ourselves in. 

The good news? We’ve only hit a couple of hills, we still have time. Just because our lives seem normal doesn’t mean the chaos is fake. Maybe we’re just so used to the chaos it has become normal. 2020 can’t be the year we lose our humanity; we’ve been fighting the system for years, we can’t just give up now. Am I being dramatic? Some might think so, but these days drama is the only way to pop peoples’ bubbles and make them look outside themselves.

The issue we’re having now is we’ve become so immune to the chaos that it takes a lot for our bubbles to even pop. 2020 has made us feel more alone than ever before and it’s time for us to look inside and see that, even alone, we are together. We need to follow our own path instead of listening to the people who believe they are in control becausd they are in control for all of the wrong reasons. 2020 has had a rocky start but if we fix ourselves, then maybe the year won’t seem so bad.