Remember when Tiger King was a thing?

Will Leitch, in his weekly newsletter, talks about time and 2020.

It is clear that we will be talking about 2020 the rest of our lives. The thing is, though, when we say things like that, “we’ll talk about 2020 the rest of our lives,” we act as if it will be able to be separated from the rest of our lives, like it was a bad vacation, or a unhappy relationship we were fortunate to eventually extricate ourselves from.

 

But that’s not what 2020 will be. It will not be a tumor we’ll be able to cut out. It’ll be with us, forever—emotionally, physically, intellectually, a traumatic shock to our collective system. Families have seen their entire foundational structures upended. Careers and business have been wiped away. Kids have grown six inches while staring at their friends and teachers on a computer screen. My hair’s turning green and my heart is pounding out of my chest. The more we go through this, the harder it gets, the farther away the end seems … the less this feels like something to be endured and then discarded, and more, perhaps, the point where it all does in fact tip. We will survive this. We are surviving this. But we are not the same. We are not what we were in March. And years from now, I suspect we will still be changed because of this.

 

This does not have to be a reason to despair. Enduring strife and struggle can focus the mind, allow us to concentrate our attention on what truly matters, to appreciate each moment while we have them, while we can. I’m going to be proud of the people I care about, of all of us, for making it through this.

 

But it’s going to scar. It surely already has.

I’m so tired of this year. The exhaustion is real. I came back from a vacation in Florida in March and immediately started working from home. The mental energy it has taken to simply continue has been staggering.