As 2022 draws to a close, people once again begin writing year-end reflections and summaries. And almost every time, the same phrase appears: an extraordinary year. But if we stop and think about it, when was the last year that could honestly be called ordinary?
For both individual lives and human society as a whole, calm and balance never last for long. Restlessness and imbalance seem to be the more constant condition. We quietly hope for peace, for steady days, for things to go smoothly from morning to night. Yet the unexpected can arrive at any moment, often without warning and often in ways we would rather not see. That, in many ways, is simply life.
Human psychology is never simple. People say they want a quiet life, but often they are unwilling to accept a life that is too plain, too unchanged, too still. Few truly enjoy living in stagnant water. Most people, even if only in secret, wait for life to bring some kind of shift or disturbance. And when people say they do not care for excitement or spectacle, perhaps what they mean is that they do not want to be the ones caught inside it. Watching other people’s commotion is another matter entirely. Human beings are naturally drawn to gossip, drama, and unfolding events, and there will always be those who feel the world is not lively enough unless something is happening somewhere. That, too, is part of human nature.
As long as we are alive, every year and every moment places us in the middle of history that feels anything but ordinary. Looking back over the major events of a single year, it often seems that this year was even more remarkable than the last. We do not even need to strain our memory to reach that conclusion. A quick glance at the number of online flashpoints, controversies, and widely discussed events is enough to give a rough picture.
And if we stretch our view across thousands of years of history, has it really been so different? It is not necessarily that the tides of history have grown more violent. Rather, more and more people are recording them. The ability to document what we call history has expanded enormously, and the traces left behind have become richer, more fragmented, and more capable of sinking deep into public memory. This is the power of writers, the power of words, and the power of media.
Today, when nearly everyone can act as media, history is being recorded constantly, from countless angles, in real time. At the same time, public opinion does not merely observe what happens; it also shapes how truth is understood. That is a defining feature of the world we live in now.