Call me 2021

For what else can you call me. That is my given name. I am but a passing milestone in this forever road of your so-called civilization.

When I started a year back, I was slightly anxious to hear that you were all shouting “Death to 2020” and “2020 sucks” and many other abusive chants at the calendar which measures nothing but the passing of time. I was happy though, thinking that maybe you will be glad that there was a new dawn, a new horizon.

There were thousands of parties when I started. People were shouting, “Happy New year”. I was glad.

There were billions of wishes and greetings exchanged. “Wish you a prosperous 2021 for you and your family”. I was flattered.

There were millions of resolutions against my name. I was honored.

But also, I was majorly confused. Because I (2021) am nothing but an arbitrary measurement of the count of the cycles of day and night, and more precisely the track of earth’s revolution around the sun.

When I dawned, I heard that you were all mad at 2020 for the events that happened in it – COVID, lockdowns, Loss of dear ones, Economic recessions, WFH..etc. But those things had as much as a causal relationship to 2020, as much as a major accident on a highway has to a milestone marker.

You don’t see people standing at a highway sign and shouting “Death to you, 220 KM mark milestone, my car broke down in your section of the road” do you?

But I understand the hoopla and the fuss around the start of any year now

The parties were not for me. It is for you(the human race) to feel less guilty so that you can continue to live a hedonistic purposeless life. I am sad

The wishes and greetings were not for my benefit. It is the cursory exchange of goodwill, an attempt to feel good for the evil you have done throughout the year by a mass WhatsApp forward. “ I might have earned millions writing software for a company that helped exploit gig workers in the bottom of the pyramid but I just sent thousand happy new year messages, so we are even”. I am depressed

The resolutions are not an attempt to improve. It is an arbitrary checkpoint. An involuntary reflex to wear a helmet while riding a two-wheeler on seeing a cop. If one really wanted to improve why wait till January 1st? I am lost

Now that I am about to end. Am sure there will be parties. They will drink to my end. I am certain.

There are going to be calls for my death too. “Death to 2021”. I am confident.

They will renew the forgotten resolutions once more. I am positive.

They are going to blame me for everything. I am certain.

They will again look forward hopefully to 2022 with a clean slate. I am sure.

The human race’s story is truly a sum of individual moving parts of collective inaction, passing of time, and inability to take responsibility. Above it all, what you don’t understand is while I make a good collective sink for picking up the blame for your inefficiencies, at the end of the day, I will be just another milestone, a page in your civilization’s story. A date in a story’s beginning. A discarded diary. A forgotten year.

To you – the human race- I say this. Do not measure your life and its impact by the spanning of years or the number of it. A single year will not and cannot make or break your life, a single or series of events can make or break your life. They may or may not happen in one calendar year. You may or may not have the ability to control them. You may or may not be lucky to come through it in one piece. The calendar year was not responsible for you having a bad year. But that’s the weird thing about collective responsibility. You- the human race- can’t even agree that it was a bad year(s).

While billionaires have made more money than ever selling vaporware leaving the public holding bags, jobs for the bottom of the pyramid have become more exploitative than ever. But hey, As long as the middle class can go on vacations to the Maldives why question anything?.

If you – the human race- want to pass judgment on the year, pass judgment on yourself first. What fundamental metric have you moved? Are you moving toward a technological utopia with flying electric cars and mind-melded social networks? Or Are you moving towards a forever burning hellscape driven by climate change where clean drinking water will be the costliest commodity?

So, the more accurate version of “2021 was so bad dude” will be “the temporary temporal slice of me who lived in 2020 was so ineffectively bad due to both my action and inaction dude”