This has almost no bearing on the discussion at hand, mind you. I mean, maybe it does; maybe there's some kind of symbolism you could derive or some pattern of behavior here you could analyze to get a better grasp on why my life has taken the trajectory that it has, and how I could correct that to work towards a better future, but that's purely incidental, and not what we're here for at the moment. The reason I even brought it up is because my initial and sweeping assessment of 2020 is summed up perfectly by the opening line of the book: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." I bet no one else has ever made THAT connection before.
But 2020 truly was one of the best years of my adult life while simultaneously being a trash year. And I'm not talking about that namby-pamby "a global crisis has me in fear for the future of humanity and please oh please just let the government take all your civil liberties so we can get this over with" attitude (although, to be fair, the trumped up coronavirus narrative, the accompanying paradigm shift of all the idiots who buy it, and the subsequent restructuring of our entire culture DID exacerbate a number of the brooding existential issues I typically deal with). It's just that... there was one thing I wanted this year, and it didn't even come close to happening.
I can't remember how much detail I went into during last year's New Years Eve post, and to be honest, I don't really want to check right at the moment. It might be fun to do so after this, but if I know myself, I probably made enough references that are veiled in a fashion thin enough for people who really know me to know what it was that I wanted. But that possibility (translation: absolute Magical Christmas Land pipe dream) was trounced long before coronavirus was on anyone's mind. And since then, I haven't really had anything in particular to hope for.
I guess that's not entirely true. In the middle of March, I got the daft idea to slide into the DMs of a girl I haven't seen since middle school. As you may be able to guess, that didn't go particularly well. To her credit, she was nice enough and very polite about it, and if you had no awareness of social cues, you might even think she was interested. But she gave me that "yes" that means "I'm saying yes now but it's actually a no, I just want you to leave me alone and hopefully we can all just forget about this pretty quickly," which is precisely what happened. I gave her the out by way of saying "well let me know when you're free," she said "definitely," and then I never heard from her again. And that was that. Please do not ever let me attempt a stunt like this again. I have now tried it twice in my life, and it was thoroughly humiliating both times.
I say this to note that, at that point, I was hopeful that perhaps I would be able to make some kind of long-missed connection, but since then, I haven't really hoped for much, at least not in the broad, life-altering sense. 2020 is the year that I gave up on having something to hope for.
And herein lies perhaps the biggest lesson I've learned this year: having nothing to hope for does not necessitate hopelessness. I am not devoid of hope. I do not feel as though the future is unflinchingly bleak. There may be good times ahead; there may not be. One thing I am fairly certain of (especially given the socio-political trends of the times) is that things are going to get worse, probably much worse, and probably relatively quickly. And I don't have anything in particular to look forward to. But that doesn't mean I have to resign myself to being hopeless. The struggle is indeed real, but hope is the attribute that allows you to carry on in spite of the struggle. Strangely enough, this is illustrated perfectly by Doom Eternal.
There's subtext in the game and in the lore at large that I'm not sure is even intended, but that's what makes good art good art: you can find meaning that even the creator didn't mean to place there (and I do believe that Doom, in its current form, is art). To summarize (and, uh, spoilers if you somehow fall into the almost impossible category of simultaneously A) reading this blog, B) haven't played Doom Eternal, and C) want to play Doom Eternal in the future), toward the end of the game, you learn that demons are actually just human souls that have been ripped from their bodies through a lengthy process of torture that completely extinguishes hope. In order to become a demon, a person must succumb to complete, all-consuming despair. And as we've learned, the Doom Slayer, in his many years traipsing across hell on his crusade to end their reign of terror, is incorruptible. And though he's on what is referred to as "the path of perpetual torment," which he willingly chose, he was never influenced by hell or the dark forces therein. Bear in mind that this is AFTER the demons took from him the one thing he loved and that he had to live for; he's a man with nothing to lose, which is part of what makes him so formidable. Despite all of this, he never lost that basic sense of hope. You'd have to maintain that in order to just keep going on a quest like that.
Of course, the irony of the opening passage of Doom 2016 (which is echoed in the sequel) is that it is directly contrasted with the closing line of Eternal: "Rip and tear, until it is done" becomes "your fight is eternal." It will never be done. The fight will never end. But you have to press on anyway, and you need some degree of hope in order to do that. You don't have to have anything in particular to hope FOR, you just need to keep pushing without giving in to despair. The fight IS what makes it worthwhile, because it's the right thing to do. I think Doom, at its core (and whether the creators meant for it to be this way or not) is about the resilience of the human spirit. Never stop moving and never stop fighting was the lesson of Doom 2016, and I think the lesson of Doom Eternal is that you just need hope in order to keep going; hope not that things WILL get better, but that they can, and even if they don't, it won't stop you.
Anyway. These are ideas that have been rattling around in my head for months now, and it's harder than you think to effectively and linearly verbalize a concept like this. Hopefully it makes sense to you. At this point, I've been sitting here for almost an hour trying to figure out how to communicate all this stuff, and I fear I must hasten away to my duties. There's a party to prepare for, as usual. And here we are on the 10th anniversary of the greatest party ever thrown. I'm pretty sure I referenced that party last year, so I don't really need to go into great detail. And if it were any other year, I'd probably say something like "hopefully 2021 will be the new 2011," since 2011 was, without a doubt, the single best year of my life. But I know that won't be the case. That year was lightning in a bottle; I peaked then, and I'll never see times like those again. I can't hope for the kind of string of serendipitous occurrences that happened that year, but what I can do is is just keep going, knowing that as long as I can keep going, that is enough.
