Can 2020 Still Be Redeemed?

Whether you were worried about COVID-19 or a persistent hangnail, you probably made up your mind months ago that 2020 has been the worst year in recent memory — a completely irredeemable year, in fact.

I know I did. I gave up on 2020 during its first month, when, on January 27, former Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven others perished in a helicopter crash in Calabasas. Ten months later, I’m still not over the loss of a man whom I had, for years, identified with strength, brilliance, and yes, even immortality.

It’s been a difficult year all around: Iran shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane, killing all 176 people on board; the nation became more divided than ever with the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump; devastating bushfires in many parts of Australia killed nearly 500 million animals; the United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union; floods in India, Nepal and China left hundreds dead and millions without homes; in Beirut, over 135 people were killed and 300,000 left homeless from multiple explosions due to unsafely stored ammonium nitrate; hundreds of protests erupted all over the country over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.

Oh, and did I mention the health and economic devastation of COVID-19? We didn’t even get a happy distraction from all this misery through sports and national pride, because the Summer Olympics in Tokyo were postponed due to the pandemic.

So yes, it’s been one hell of a year. But as far as things getting worse in 2020 are concerned, we’re just one week away from the definitive moment of damnation or redemption: the U.S. presidential election.

If you’ve been blaming everything on 2020, and on November 3rd, your candidate loses, this year is effectively over for you. But if he wins, you might tell every friend, mail carrier, and social media follower that 2020 was saved, after all.

In the miserable, partisan schism that has turned Americans against one another, this is what it’s all come down to: The only way 2020 can be redeemed for individual Americans is if half the population is pleased. That’s how intense everyone has become about this election.

And it does indeed seem like an existential election. Both sides perceive enormous stakes. Many of us are conducting relationships with family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers through the dangerously emotional, narrow prism of our lizard brains — the (oldest) part of the brain that responds to everything with fear and aggression. It’s almost election day and the komodo dragons are running the show.

It’s almost election day and the komodo dragons are running the show.

I may only be in my 30s, but I can’t recall a U.S. election whose anticipated results have been discussed with so many anxiety-inducing scenarios.

It used to be that Americans wondered whether they could pay off student debt or afford to buy a home under an incumbent administration or that of a challenger. But in this election, many of us are wondering whether we can even live in America anymore. That kind of existential thinking makes this election, and by extension, this year, seem even more dire.

I know the policies of whomever is elected president will affect us all at micro and macro levels. But let’s be real: Politics won’t redeem 2020 for most of us, because it is our family and friends whom we’ll have to see (or continue to reject) in 2021 and beyond — not the president, whether Trump or Biden.

The president, old or new, will be eating a sandwich in the Oval Office while our mothers and fathers cry in pain because we’ve stopped talking to them (they apparently didn’t vote for the “right” issues); the president will be enjoying a sunset outside the window of Air Force One while we and our one-time friends attack each other on the cowardly platforms of social media.

I even have friends — souls I’ve loved and cherished for years — who won’t talk to me because I expressed support for the Trump administration’s brokered peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and now, Sudan.

What they don’t realize is that, for me and many others, such welcome news was a much-needed balm on the open wound that is 2020. Allowing myself to see and celebrate the good helped me develop the metaphoric antibodies I needed to cope with this deeply unhealthy year.

We’re getting closer and closer to the imminent arrival of darkness. It’ll sneak up on us, depress us, and leave us wishing for the light of weeks past. I’m not referring to Daylight Savings Time, but to the November 3rd election. Of course, if your side wins, you will only see the light.

But regardless of which side wins, regardless of how we all perceive the stakes, there is still something even bigger at stake: our relationships — those messy, perfectly imperfect moments of connection, rupture, and reunification that give us life and, when nourished, a reason to live.

Maybe it’s too late to redeem 2020. But we can at least find small, but powerful ways to redeem one another.

Tabby Refael is a Los Angeles-based writer, speaker and activist.