2020 – The Year We Hit Rock Bottom
With the dawn of 2021 upon us, we asked different people to summarize their experience of where this year led them. Here we find out what unifies us and what sets us apart, as this rollercoaster of a year comes to an end.
Muhammad Araheem Abaid had this to say about the way this year was one of the most unique we have experienced so far:
“Every year, by the time Christmas rolls around, I like to take a look at the year that has just passed and contemplate everything that had transpired: the good and the bad. As I prepare to do just that for the year 2020, I cannot help but think of someone a few hundred years from now reading the events of this year and thinking someone probably edited the Wikipedia page to mess with people. Because as unbelievable as some of the things that came to pass in this remarkably dreadful year are, they were a sad reality for everyone who made it out of it alive, and also those that sadly didn’t, and we will not be forgetting about it any time soon.
It is probably bad when a year starts off bad. The signs were right there for all to see with the Australian bushfire on the 1st of January, but that was only the beginning. The Coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent lockdown will go down as the major problems, but that was just a small part of what 2020 had in store for us; massive earthquakes, floods, racial tensions, murder hornets and a plethora of other horrible events marred this year. If a TV Show had half the events we got to face, people would complain the writers had too wild of an imagination.”
Kashaf Imran tried to look on the bright side of things, going on to say that upon closer consideration there were in fact some upsides.
“Blessing in disguise is the perfect liner to define 2020 in a nutshell because if we prepare an alchemy of blessings, curses, and learning we get a summary of 2020. As much as the challenges, hardships, loss of lives, and the like are recognized to be the fate of 2020, one cannot just ignore or fail to recognize the blessings 2020 brought. Those blessings are the treasure granted to mankind containing the jewels of life. Those jewels of life are the greater truths. The grant of these greater truths took mankind to the journey of learning through trials and tribulations. Just like a market that keeps an industry evolving towards making a profit, the global pandemic played a similar role by spurring upon us to be more agile, more creative, and more inventive in order to make us learn the worth of self-care because we human beings were long lost in illusion hence being ignorant of the fact that our emotions are signals to what we are coping with or coping through. At a point when pandemic and COVID took a number of lives and stuck us under the claws of misery, it took us into the light of realization, the realization that time is a limited source, hence one should live to the fullest in the present moment, to spend time with your dear and near ones because you never know what the very next moment brings about.
Fear for long has played a key role in man’s life and 2020 was no exception to this. The fear grew even more with the turmoil that 2020 brought but that is how we human beings were able to sabotage our fears and eventually became the stoical survivors hence bringing life into the commonly quoted saying from a post-apocalyptic novel by the author G. Michael Hopf: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times”. Nonetheless, we cannot deny how 2020 and the experience of lockdown, in general, has been awakening because that’s how we got self-care, that’s how we realized that freedom is never free, that’s how we discovered the power of trusting ourselves, the power of empathy by realizing the secret battles everyone is fighting with their demons. These are the greater truths 2020 bestowed with us by taking us to rule on the treacherous path full of twists and turns just to sow a seed of gratefulness, glory, and goodness.”
Iqra Ali Mirza talked about the effects of the pandemic and went on to say that we should enter the next year with high hopes and spirits.
“2020 has been no less than a rollercoaster. Myriad of businesses have been annihilated to their core. Poverty has bolstered with people struggling to even find adequate food for sustenance. In addition to this, mental health has deteriorated amongst the masses amidst the pandemic. Cases of domestic violence have escalated widely since everyone is stuck inside their abodes. Education has somewhat disrupted all over the world.
Never in our lives could we have envisaged to find ourselves in such a predicament where the entirety of our lives would turn upside down, yet here we are. Who knew that sip of coffee with your friends on a sunny Wednesday would be the last one for quite some time? Or that weekend you went over to the cinema with your family would mark a halt to going to the movies for this long. Life is truly unpredictable! This year only teaches us how we must learn to live in the moment and cherish all the diminutive blessings as they come. Value every little detail of your day.
To sum it up, this year has been extremely overwhelming for most of us. Let’s hope the next year brings by merriment and we bid farewell to this ghastly microbe; once and for all. Although, 2020 has been onerous for mankind. We should make the best out of every situation. We will be entering a new decade soon and we must enter with high spirits. After all, clinging onto the beacon of hope will certainly get us through this ordeal.”
As we move into the new beginning that is 2021, we are accompanied by a feeling of hope. Hope for a better year ahead, because as Araheem said – We may have hit rock bottom this year, but that means the only place left to go is up. We wish you all a blessed year ahead and pray that it’s filled with a lot more happiness and laughter, and we see more smiles all around. Meanwhile, keep on washing your hands everybody, and make sure to practice social distancing. Stay happy, healthy, and safe, folks, and a very Happy New Year to all of you.
By: Iqra Ali Mirza, Kashaf Imran, Muhammad Araheem Abaid
Edited By: Haniya Javed
