2020 Will Never End Unless You Grieve It

There’s a hidden power in recognizing all that we’ve lost

A few days ago I walked past a central London office building I used to work in.

I indulged in that time-honored urban past-time: revisiting a life I used to live by re-enacting a daily routine that’s now long gone. With my muscle memory as my route map, I passed by the John Lewis window displays that once served as a reliable marker of the capitalist calendar on my walk to work — Halloween, Christmas, January sales, Valentine’s day, Easter, Mother’s day ad infinitum — and then those bizarre American candy stores that appear, improbably, to have survived lockdown.

As I did this I felt not just straightforward nostalgia, but also a keen sense of grief. Grief that this particular walk, headspace, life, is so radically different from the one I live now.

The weird and perhaps confusing thing is that I don’t actually want that life back.

I remember often embarking on that same walk to Oxford Circus station, feeling so strung out on the internet and fluorescent lights that I scarcely felt human. But the person I was two years, one year, or even six months ago — the things I cared about and the ambitions and optimism and expectations of life that I had — feel so starkly different from now. I can’t help but miss it a little.