Kylie Jenner was right: 2016 was a year of “realizing stuff.” We elected Trump, and people realized they didn’t understand their own country as well as they thought. We realized that the pundit class are not much more than political Mike Francesas, paid to be wrong loudly. And the world realized that two young DJs with a big dream could become one of the most important music acts of all time: The Chainsmokers.
Once again, we are in a landmark year for realizing. It seems realization years follow the same quadrennial calendar as summer Olympics and elections. One wonders if this is the same cosmological harmony that points salmon toward their spawning ground; that synchronizes the moon’s orbit with its rotation such that we always see the same side; why every time I poop, I also pee.
My big realization for 2020 has been this: For the preceding 22.5 years of my life, I have viewed my life as a speedboat cruise. I point the nose of my ship towards where I want to go, and go. Sometimes, of course, the water gets choppy, but for the most part it’s been blissfully smooth. Once in a while, you get lost or choose a different destination and change course. But, ultimately, I have a steering wheel to choose where I’m headed and a motor to get me there.
I don’t believe this anymore. I see myself now as rowing a tiny skiff on a vast and turbulent ocean. I’m jostled and thrown about, subjected to whirlpools and rip currents, and carried off course by the Coriolis effect. I have oars, but ultimately Neptune will do with me as he sees fit. My main concern is keeping my little boat upright and afloat. I wonder whether I am really the captain of my fate.
I can’t shake the sensation that things will only get worse. It’s obvious now that we failed to contain the virus. COVID-19 will also be COVID-20, then COVID-20s, then COVID-We Lost Count. There’s no certainty whatsoever that there will be a vaccine, and this coronavirus could become one of those diseases that humanity just lives with for centuries, like small pox or senioritis. People may get sick and die from COVID decades from now. But, we should remember that even the Plague was not always a death sentence. Doctors might be able to taste our urine, blame an imbalance in our melancholic humour on the sign of the Ram, and order our legs amputated by a barber (for a $189,000 copay). Look into that, Gilead.
But let’s say there is a vaccine, it works, it’s affordable, it’s distributed to the entire world, the anti-vax movement (which the President loves to tout) doesn’t flare up, and there’s none of Bill Gates’s seminal fluid in the syringes. Then we’ll just solve the next few problems and everything will be peachy! The permafrost won’t melt, releasing thousands of forgotten diseases lying nascent in mummified elk. (Good thing Siberia didn’t hit 100 degrees this week!) Dhaka, Lagos, Miami, Venice, and the Seychelles won’t sink. 10% of the world won’t be refugees. Thousands of species won’t go extinct every year. Global agricultural production won’t collapse under constant drought, fires, and storms and untold millions of won’t starve.
According to the Realization Calendar, the last round of realizing happened in 2012. Looking back, there were a lot of realizations that year: Kony 2012 proved the scale and impotence of online organizing; Obama wasn’t just a fluke; people were doing the Harlem Shake. Oppa Gangnam style! It was also the last time I can remember when the zeitgeist was so obsessed with apocalypse. The Mayan calendar and Nostradamus said we were done for that December. All over the world, discourse was turning eschatological. What would it mean for the world to end? Death? Reckoning? How could they have known? Did they account for leap years? The poster for the movie 2012 was a lone monk on a mountaintop, like Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, watching a tsunami plunge over the Himalayas.
That’s how the waves seem to be rising up around me in my little boat. Looking five, ten, twenty years into the future, it seems certain that the question will not be where to go, but how to keep my boat from capsizing. I don’t think my parents or grandparents saw their lives this way. Maybe your life is determined for you, Calvinist style, by when you come into the world. It’s not nature or nurture, but timing. Tony Soprano says in the first episode: “It's good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”
Tony’s ancestors, the ancient Romans, might not have had any idea what was happening as their empire crumbled. There’s a theory that the whole thing fell apart because everyone was so turnt from the lead in their pipes. Should I follow their lead? Tell the bartender to make that motherfucker stronger? Go all night longer?
I consider it my greatest accomplishment that I’m still pursuing comedy. To be working on the same dream at 22 as I was at 12 feels like a tremendous privilege to me. I’ve always known doing comedy came at the expense of employability and earning potential, but I don’t really care. Is that a mistake? Will I wish I learned to code or weld when I’m applying for an emergency visa to Finland? Will I wish I made more money when I’m haggling for a seat on the last helicopter out of Brooklyn, as the Atlantic breaches the New York Seawall? Or will I simply go down like the violin players in Titanic, doing crowd work as the floodwaters reach my chin?
Professor Jem Bendall says so. In his paper “Deep Adaptation: A Map For Navigating Climate Tragedy,” he concludes that “there will be a near-term collapse in society with serious ramifications for the lives of readers.” He sees no way out of climate tragedy, and says we need to start “deep adaptation”: a complete overhaul of our lives in the face of destruction. In other words, we need to prepare for the end. Bendall says reevaluate your life, relationships, and activities. He sees impending climate tragedy as Marie Kondo on steroids, forcing us to dump anything that no longer sparks joy. The coronavirus is pointing us all to Bendall’s conclusions accidentally. People are staying home, spending time with family, baking bread, masturbating, and finding it’s better than whatever we were doing before. Bendall says keep it that way.
(Note: Reading this article in 2018 changed my thinking in the way a health class video says LSD can get stuck in your spinal fluid and keep you in a bad trip forever. Discretion is advised.)
I don’t know what the future holds. I have predictions: things will be sectarian, violent, uncomfortable, and scarce. I can say, with complete certainty, that it will be weird. But it’s not so bad yet. We’ll figure out the end of the world later. For now, I’m just here in my little boat, floating around, seeing where the water takes me. Gone fishing.