Have We Run Out of Words to Describe 2020?

I so regret my sloppy use of language from my pre-coronavirus days. In everyday conversations, I would routinely use phrases like “this is crazy” or “this is unreal” or “this is unbelievable” or “there are no words” [to describe a certain emotion or situation.] In every instance, I was grossly exaggerating.

It was like a reflex. Maybe it’s fun to dramatize and add excitement to one’s language. Saying “there are no words” is a classic example of this dramatization. “There are no words to describe how much I love you.” “There are no words to describe my outrage at this turn of events,” and so on.

The only problem is that it’s not accurate. Of course there are words! We just need to figure out what they are.

The utter devastation of a global pandemic has taken the challenge of figuring out the right words to a whole other level. Considering I’ve already used up “crazy” and “unreal” and “disaster” and “unbelievable” on everyday problems, what words do I have left for 2020?

Considering I’ve already used up “crazy” and “unreal” and “disaster” and “unbelievable” on everyday problems, what words do I have left for 2020?

In the early months of the pandemic, “unprecedented” was the word du jour, but even that muscular term has worn out its welcome.  It no longer feels strong enough for COVID-19.

This dilemma has only sharpened with the arrival of other crises– from racial protests to an intensely divisive election—making the pandemic year even more difficult to describe.

Because my profession depends on words, this awkward paucity of language has left me in a kind of verbal pickle. The pandemic year of 2020 is so crazy and unreal and unbelievable there may, in fact, not be any words that could do it justice. Even dramatic terms like “disruption” and “turmoil” seem to shrink in front of 2020.

Come to think of it, that may be one way to describe our year: everything has shrunk. In 2020, our words, our lives, our communities, our spaces, our businesses– everything seems smaller in one way or another.

Alas, even that is not really accurate, since so many people have risen to the occasion during the pandemic. They didn’t shrink in 2020; they grew.

So what words do we have left to fully capture the disorienting, bewildering and traumatic upending of our lives that has occurred in 2020, and which may get even crazier after this week’s election?

I asked my friend and trauma expert Monica Osborne, who replied in an email: “In trauma studies, some say that the most authentic artistic representation of trauma is silence or absence because that’s how true traumatic events work: they strip us of the capacity to articulate them. The absence of words is the symptom of real trauma.”

In other words, maybe the truest way to describe the collective trauma of 2020 is simply to admit that there are no words, and be at peace with it.

Perhaps with fewer words, we will spend less time describing and more time being, doing and healing.

Perhaps with fewer words, we will spend less time describing and more time being, doing and healing.