OK, others had it worse but 2020 was rubbish
Ithink we can all agree that 2020 was awriteoff. Especially if you’re anything like me and you spent your New Year’s Eve looking back on last year’s resolutions and laughing hysterically.
It was like unearthing long-lost letters from a quaint time when people believed in shiningly naive ideas like easy travel and unconquerable human willpower.
So this NYE, my friends and Iwallowed in prosecco and group chats, examining the year’s collective carnage. We all agreed we’d failed to be the better adults we’d resolved to be – but also that it has just been an annus horribilis all round.
In fact, every conversation I’ve had this last week has opened with, ‘‘God, it’s been a hard year.’’
Whether you failed in your resolutions, had an internal crisis, got stuck overseas, ran out of money trying to get back, lost your job ... In a moment of rare national unity usually reserved for facing Australia at sport, we’ve all come together to agree that 2020 has been a lemon.
But something strange always happens as soon as you get into a discussion on this topic. People will start qualifying and apologising for having an awful year. Especially if it was only moderately awful.
All confessions of misery, disappointment and terror are tempered with, ‘‘but I know I shouldn’t complain, actually I’m really lucky’’. Often followed by, ‘‘Did you hear what happened to poor Brian-Next-Door ...’’ You’ll ask Brian-NextDoor, who’ll confess that he was made redundant, bankrupt and chased by flesh-eating bats, but ‘‘I shouldn’t complain, I’m really lucky, did you hear what happened to poor Nancy-NextNext-Door?’’
On it goes. Each of us says that, however bad it is, we don’t have it too bad. It could have been worse. There’s someone more deserving of pity
. . . We seem to think that, unless we were living in the absolute extreme of abject misery and flesh-eating bats, we should apologise for the privilege of a slightly-less-awful 2020.
Now I know why we’re doing this, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s ridiculous. We need to stop apologising for having a crap year. Even if, by all standards, it was only a moderately crap one.
I know we instinctively sideline our internal strife, always telling ourselves that someone else has it worse. (It’s what happens when you grow up in a culture of entrenched emotional constipation that often confuses vulnerability with self-pity.) God, we don’t want to look whiny. And hence all the apologising and ‘‘Well, it wasn’t that bad ...’’
And I know we’re all going through a cultural phase of checking our privilege. Which is good, but can make us shy of talking about our own unhappiness for fear of looking like we don’t care about the misery of others.
But mostly, underlying all the apologising, is the idea that our unhappiness isn’t ‘‘valid’’. It’s not big enough, nasty enough, catastrophic enough somehow. And not only do we doubt it. We know that those listening to our confessions doubt it too.
I noticed it in myself last year in lockdown. If I was listening to someone complain, and if it sounded to me like aminor complaint, I’d become instinctively dismissive.
Every instinct in me sniffed, ‘‘Oh please, I’ve had it worse than that, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’’ We get so wrapped up in our own misery that we automatically judge everyone else’s experience against our own scales to see if it’s acceptable.
But this is nuts. Validity is an awful concept to apply to any unhappiness. Whether it’s to your own, or to someone else’s.
We all know deep down that unhappiness doesn’t care if it’s being reasonable or not. It just arrives and makes your life hell, whatever the circumstances.
And besides, if 2020 showed us anything, it’s that everyone handles stress differently. Some people can cope with a huge amount. Others crumble over small things. So it’s impossible to create a universally accepted bar that everyone’s unhappiness has to jump in order to be ‘‘acceptable’’.
Let’s just let everyone indulge in the collective catharsis of a good, unabashed rant about the past year. Regardless of whether it was a small trash-can fire or a full-on blazing building.
Burn up all the unhappiness and welcome 2021.
Let’s just let everyone indulge in the collective catharsis of a good, unabashed rant about the past year.