It’s Not Really 2020’s Fault
There’s something weirdly satisfying about saying — and believing — things like “Only one month left in this cursed year.” When something terrible or unbelievable or plain ridiculous happens, we post on Twitter or text our friends, “Wow, that was so 2020.”
And sure, why not? “To make sense of the chaos and uncertainty, our brains look for patterns, an easy way to explain what’s happening,” Jordan Davidson explains in Elemental. “One of those shortcuts: blaming it all on 2020.”
But as Davidson points out, blaming 2020 for, you know, everything, isn’t actually very healthy: “This false hope that the negative events of this year are caused by the year itself and will get better with the passing of it is an example of what psychologists call ‘magical thinking.’”
It’s not very accurate, either. Annaleise Griffin notes in Forge: “The year is not the problem. We are. Which means we can do something about it.”
