A Requiem for 2020

As I start to write this, news from Kentucky has come in, announcing the devastating verdict in the trial for the killing of Breonna Taylor. It is yet another soul-crushing development that has become characteristically and dreadfully de rigueur for 2020. It arrives just days after the untimely death of American pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Her passing spreads across social media with countless sad emojis populating people's posts and comments about the outstanding legacy of the Supreme Court Justice, a real-life superhero. That announcement comes just weeks after the death of Chadwick Boseman, a man who portrayed a fictional superhero and represented so much to so many. Meanwhile, the air quality in Southern California has finally improved after a week of the worst conditions I have experienced in the two decades I've lived in Los Angeles. While a sizable portion of the country is on fire, another is drowning in floods caused by back-to-back hurricanes. All Halloween activities have been cancelled, offering a bleak forecast for festivities in November and December. And to top it all off, the COVID-19 death toll in America continues to inch closer to yet another grim milestone as we continue to inch closer to a presidential election so tense, so divisive, its results conjure up images of a second civil war...

It would be trite to say that I am over 2020, that it is the Worst Year Ever. True, we still have some days left in the calendar year to receive news that won’t make us completely keel over for the umpteenth time, and depending on which side of the ever-widening aisle you fall on, the results of the 2020 Election have offered a glimmer of light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. However, I know I’m not alone when I say that I feel like I’ve already witnessed and experienced a decade’s worth of strife, struggle, and suffering in the past nine months...

For the rest of my year-end thoughts (and there are a lot of them), check them out at Medium.

@TheFirstEcho