How We Will Talk About 2020 In the Future

It’ll be all our grandchildren ask us about.

I always thought my children, when they were adults, would ask me what it was like to live through September 11. I lived in New York City on 9/11, and while I wasn’t downtown when the attacks happened, anyone who was in the city will never forget what that day, and the weeks afterward, was like. It was a pivot event for millions of New Yorkers; I was 24 years old when it happened, and I haven’t been the same since. It was overwhelming, and transformative. I assumed it was the biggest thing I’d ever be a part of.

One of the more disorienting aspects of the pandemic, and 2020, is how it has made all the signature events in our lives seem so much smaller. Challenger explosion? O.J. Simpson trial? Columbine? Bush-Gore 2000? Sure, those felt huge at the time, but have you lived through a once in a century pandemic? All those moments were scarring, but eventually you could turn the corner on them; you processed them and did the best you could to move on with your life. You could put them in their little corner and deal with them when you had to. But there has been no escaping the pandemic. There isn’t a single aspect of human life on this planet that hasn’t been upended in every possible way because of what has happened in 2020. This is the biggest thing any of us have ever lived…