I’m pretty confident saying that 2020 is one of the strangest years I’ve had. Probably the most similar year for me was 2001. I was a Junior in college and was awoken by one of my room mates telling me that a plane had collided with the world trade center. I then watched on live TV the second plane collide and shortly after I watched the world trade center collapse. I then headed out to my sparsely attended physics 201 lab at 10:30am where my professor was semi-annoyed that students used the trade center attack as an excuse to skip class.

I’m telling my story of September 11 because it reminds me that day to day world events such as these are only so significant in our lives as we let them be you can always just choose to work on your physics lab, no one has attacked you specifically.

After September 11th I remember arguing with my Friends that we shouldn’t invade Afghanistan that I thought it was going to be a massive waste. Most people disagreed with me, which is fine. I do believe I was correct. In retrospect the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan was a massive waste of life and treasure and there’s still thousands of US troops there fighting for… I’m not really sure anymore what they’re fighting for these days.

After the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan the US government doubled down on our massive blunder and invaded Iraq spring 2003. I remember watching the “shock and awe” invasion on live TV and a couple of months later the infamous “mission accomplished” banner… WTF were we thinking? A lot of people I went to High School with served in Iraq where shot at and lost friends. For what purpose? To what end?

Maybe if we had all just “gone back to physics lab” in 2001 so much worth less war could have been averted? My lesson is having the wrong reactions to a negative event can have disastrous consequences. Don’t worry so much about what you can’t control and just keep on keeping on.

2020 is not yet historically settled and if we react to the events of it without deliberation and patience much waste can come. The USA has problems around wealth inequality and racial equity. COVID19 accelerated these problems and made them painfully obvious. But not reacting incorrectly is critical. The reaction to September 11th was to destroy two countries which had little do to with the individual actors who hijacked those planes. We simplified the problem, someone attacked us and we needed to attack back, but that was the critical mistake. None of these problems are simple. And people who bring us simple solutions are probably wrong.

Donald Trump was the great Simplifier in Chief. He had a simple solution to everything. He lost the 2020 election in spite of this. Hopefully this means that most people are tired of simple solutions and they are becoming more aware that simple solutions don’t work.