You ever have one of those moments when you look around and think, “Wait, when did life start feeling like a weird social experiment?” For me, that was 2020. The year everything stopped — except anxiety, sourdough starters, and people arguing about masks on Facebook. It was like somebody hit “reset” on the world and didn’t bother to read the manual first.
Before that year, I thought I understood how society worked. You vote, you go to work, you hang out with your friends, you pay too much for coffee — simple. Then suddenly, someone somewhere decided that grocery store aisles needed traffic flow, hugging was suspicious, and we were all potential biohazards. The rules changed faster than a Florida thunderstorm. And we all played along, half because we wanted to stay safe, and half because we didn’t want to be that person.
The crazy part? Most of us adjusted. We became fluent in six-foot distances and disinfectant rituals. We learned how to smile with our eyes, or at least tried. But behind all that hand sanitizer, a lot of people started asking quiet questions — about authority, trust, and what “normal” really means. Who gets to decide what’s safe? What’s science, what’s politics, and what’s just plain confusion? Nobody seemed to know, but everyone had a megaphone.
Looking back, I don’t think 2020 was just about a virus. It was about power — not in a cartoon villain sense, but in that subtle, everyday way where control gets traded for comfort. Governments, tech companies, schools, even families — we all found ourselves redrawing lines we thought were permanent. Some people gave up freedoms for a sense of security. Others resisted everything out of principle. Most of us just tried to survive without losing our minds.
Experts still disagree about whether all the shutdowns and mandates were the right call. Some data says lockdowns saved lives; other research says they caused huge social and economic fallout. Both can be true. What’s clear is that it left scars — not just on economies, but on trust. We learned how fragile our routines are, how quickly isolation can mess with mental health, and how much human beings need connection, even messy, imperfect, in-person connection.
Now, a few years later, we’re still sorting through the emotional leftovers. Some people went back to normal like nothing happened. Others never really did. There’s this quiet tension now — between wanting to move on and wondering if we’ve actually learned anything. I see it every time someone coughs in public and everyone turns their head like they’re witnessing a crime scene.
Maybe “Year Zero” isn’t just about what was lost, but about what got exposed — how dependent we are on systems we barely understand, and how uncomfortable it feels when those systems start to wobble. For all the chaos and control, 2020 forced a big, ugly, necessary question: Who do we trust when everything’s on fire?
And honestly, I’m still thinking about it every time I wash my hands.
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