2021: The Year When It Seemed As If We Barely Managed to Survive the ‘Squid Games’

How do you sum up a year that was burdened with great expectations following annus horribilis? What do you call a year in which momentary relief overlapped with terrible disasters in quick successions, a year that delivered optimism but sprung new complications as well? What do you call a year that gave us real hope but also showed us how hollow victories can feel? 2021 has been an ambiguous year. A year difficult to place on the barometer of fair and foul. Following the arrival of the vaccines in spring, for a while, we let out our long-held breath. Mask mandates were withdrawn and businesses and restaurants cautiously opened their doors. Office and school reopening dates were also decided. Slowly but surely we planned our crawl back to routine. Just when the situation felt like it was stabilizing, a new variant arrived to rock our already unsteady boats. The finish line that seemed within reach hid behind a thick curtain of uncertainty, again. What followed was a repeat of closings and openings, of hope and despair.

Scientifically it was a breakthrough year given the speed with which vaccines were introduced for the novel coronavirus. It seemed nothing short of a miracle to roll out a vaccine in less than a year. The quickest vaccine developed previously was the one for mumps that had taken four years. This was truly an extraordinary feat. What had gone unnoticed till now was that the vaccine scientists Kizzmekia Corbett, Barney Graham, Katalin Kariko, and Drew Weissman put in decades of work in creating a highly effective vaccine platform, based on mRNA. They felt that for years they were the only ones who cared about solving the problem and yet today the entire world believes that their innovation will impact health and well-being far beyond this pandemic. It is a year when science got its due over everything. 

It was also a year when the home office became a symbol of both convenience and monotony. Time was freed up as we stopped dragging ourselves through the morning commutes every day and tasted the freedom to work whenever we felt like but soon mornings bled into afternoons and afternoons spilled into evenings, and after a while, the entire day seemed like one big blob. Stuck into workdays were repetitive chores. Some of us stretched out the maximum number of meals out of our minimal cooking. The sameness played a mind game with us. I was personally struck with bouts of forgetfulness. I often stared at my dishwasher trying to decide whether the full load was washed or not. Did I indeed forget to press the start button last night, as whispered by a niggling thought that had wormed its way into my thoughts the moment I woke up? The disorientations and discolorations of confinement became more pronounced on the zoom screens that doubled up as mirrors. It constantly showed us our accelerating 40 or 50-something physical flaws. It made us go on a self-correction frenzy. More exercise. Better diet.

It’s the year we realized that even when we have the freedom to decelerate, we can’t do so because we are still slaves to our internal pressure to utilize each waking moment to be productive, to achieve.

The web series and films this year reflected the reality around us—the doom of every variety. And a sense of exhaustion. The latest Bond movie showed how life and science can tame even the world’s most energetic spies. Then came along the “Squid Game.” We knew it would be gory and rather depressing, yet we consumed the entire series without blinking an eye. The last year seemed like a parade of challenging games like the series — each with new rules. One misstep and you are eliminated. Like the last few participants of the “Squid Game” little by little, the gnaw of desperation started fraying at the ends as a sense of futility took over. 

It is a year we discovered how our internal landscape has changed in an attempt to adjust to the new reality. We thought that we would welcome the chance to return to social activities with eagerness, especially after almost a year and a half of keeping away from mingling. But as we re-entered society we saw that the rules of human engagement had changed. It’s now more reactive and precariously seesawing between resentment and awkwardness. Bernard Golden, psychologist and author of “Overcoming Destructive Anger” thinks that we are going through a period when people’s threat system is at a heightened level and that has had a damaging effect on our mental health. “Half the people fear COVID,” says Golden. “Half the people fear being controlled.” The frustration of not being able to go back to 2019 kind of normal has led to such displaced anger that it has led to impolite behavior both in private and public life. The only good thing that has surfaced from this though is the awareness that mental health is important. Hypervigilance has led us all to focus on ourselves in ways that we have not done before. 

But overall, 2021 is a year of rethinking our priorities and lives. It’s the year we realized that even when we have the freedom to decelerate, we can’t do so because we are still slaves to our internal pressure to utilize each waking moment to be productive, to achieve. To constantly feed our ego and put ourselves — our wit, our rage, our work — on display, even if we get bone-tired or collapse while doing so. It’s not just the virus that is making us tired, it’s also our inner selves and vanity that is making us constantly run on deficit. It’s up to us now whether we decide to further deplete ourselves or turn a new leaf and let go of the compulsions that harm us in 2022.

---

Sreya Sarkar is a public policy analyst based out of Boston, who has previously worked as a poverty alleviation specialist in U.S. think tanks. She is a keen observer of Indian politics and presently, writes non-fiction articles and op-eds for Indian policy blogs and magazines.