2020, The Year
As we stepped in 2020, everyone was filled with hopes. Hope of a better year, a year in which one wanted to reach closer to their dreams. Everyone was excited and wanted to start the decade with a bang.
But 2020 had other plans. 2020 wanted everyone to know that there is no one greater than time, no one is greater than the nature and no one is permanent. Every single thing is fleeting, whether it is human’s time outside in the nature or even human’s life itself.
China started the year with a rather unexpected news. A virus, which is found in bats, made its way to a human through unexplained sources. The virus, named as COVID-19 (from the family of coronaviruses), was notorious in behaviour. It wanted to catch on as many humans as possible. It doesn’t want to stop. The humans, as usual, awaken their survival instinct and tried to hide from the grasp of the virus. But the virus was a professional in its field. With every sneeze, every cough, every touch and every word that came from humans, the virus travelled and it has travelled like there’s no tomorrow. Jumping across the continents, virus soon spread across the whole world. Governments across the world panicked for the health of their citizens and put every citizen in lockdown. And still the virus travelled, albeit slow, but travelled. Soon after 3 months of lockdown, there was an ironical equilibrium. People were dying of the virus. But equal number of people were dying from the lockdown. World’s economy was in shambles. Rich people were not able to earn at the pace they were earning, poor people were not able to earn their daily meal. Governments decided to let the virus run through its course, and open the economy because, well, people dying of a virus is still a less probability than people dying of hunger. As I write this in November, the virus is strong and the economy is recovering. But yet people have been drained, and dying. Mentally as well as emotionally.
2020 also had a few things extra in store for Indians. COVID-19 was the major challenge which overshadowed all other tragedies but still if we have faced them in any other year, they would have caused ripples across the country. We had cyclones hit our coastal areas, earthquakes hitting our northern plains and mountainous regions, had very deadly locust attacks (farming wise), gas leaks from chemical plants, etc. We also had some role models of the country passing away but since the whole world is fighting for life and death, this is overshadowed.
2020 also showed us how we are divided and polarised. The oldest democracy and the strongest country of the world voted in their presidential elections. Almost fifty percent of the citizens voted for a highly inflammatory leader who, in the past four years, have destroyed multiple good things which were aligned to make this world a better place. Paris Climate Accord, Iranian Nuclear Deal, Immigration are to name a few. If fifty percent citizens are voting towards someone like him, one needs to think that how those want the future and how unnecessarily inwards we have become. The social media hasn’t helped anyone. It, with its AI algorithms, have forced us to see more and more provocative stuff.
As a world, we are living in a very precarious situation. People are still expected to remain home, and stay safe from the virus. And when people are home, and not out to work or in lap of the nature, people overthink a lot. This overthinking has destroyed the basic structure of human minds where they can think of others, where they can think of what is right and what is wrong. Their judgement has been impaired.
2020 has really shown us a mirror and has fast forwarded the erosion of minds. As human, we need to think of ways to reduce that or else we are down on the path of more agony.
