By David Himmel

We got sick of hearing it pretty quickly. “In these unprecedented times… 

We heard it in TV and radio spots. Ads on our podcasts. From elected leaders. From the higher ups at our companies.

“In these unprecedented times…” became trite, ubiquitous, and appallingly annoying as fast as the shutdowns swept through our cities.

In these unprecedented times…

What was unprecedented? A global pandemic? That happened a century ago. So maybe “unprecedented times” refers to times we lived through. Okay, I’ll allow that. For the moment. What else is unprecedented? Social unrest, clashes with police, racial inequalities boiling over? That was kind of a big deal half a century ago when a lot of us were alive. If unprecedented times are those we’ve never lived through, we can’t say that Summer 2020 was unprecedented. Cities have gobbled themselves up before. Anything else unprecedented? The Trump Administration? Nah, that freak show’s been happening for five years now. It’s old hat.

Really, all of this is old hat. Sure, this year has been a lot of a lot, which makes it feel like 2020 is an unprecedented time. But no new year of any kind is going to make all of the roadkill along the highway that is the hellscape of 2020 disappear. Father Time doesn’t give one single fuck about what we have going on. He moves along at his calculated pace time and time again, forever and ever (amen). And Baby New Year? Babies are too self-absorbed to care about us or Trump or viruses or social justice or any of it.

No, these aren’t unprecedented times. We’ve been here before. Which is to say, we’ve never been here and this is our first time here—right now.

We’re always living in unprecedented times.

Unprecedented means never done or known before. So, every moment that comes is unprecedented. If we’re to believe that moments matter in the grand scheme of this exhausting, debilitating, and all too short life we live, which is governed entirely by time. Tick. Tock.

We’re always living in unprecedented times. That’s the optimist’s way of seeing things. Every moment is new and exciting and… unprecedented. Or, we’ve slapped a label on these times as dramatically unprecedented because SO MUCH BAD STUFF IS HAPPENING TO US ALL AT ONCE! And I get that. A lot of little problems make for a hard go. A lot of big problems can ruin a year, or more.

As we continue wandering our way through these unprecedented times, I suggest we take the word back. Make it as mundane as any weekday any week in any month in any year. That way we can focus on solving the problems rather than focusing on how wretched and destructive it all is.

And so, I’m going to start asking people, “Hey, excuse me, do you have the unprecedented time?” And they’ll ignore, I’m sure because what kind of lunatic asks a question like that? One living in these unprecedented times, it appears.