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Comment by _jcrossley | Hacker News Reader

Heartbreaking. And here I thought the pain of 2020 was over already. RIP

Reality is, years don't mark anything. People have been saying "x year is the worst" increasingly for the last 4 years, and 2020 is the only recent one that actually fits. Tomorrow isn't going to shift anything, it's just how we keep track of time. Expecting a year to contain itself is what leads to this yearly disappointment everyone seems to experience. What I find frustrating, is that all people can say about most deaths now a day is "this year is the worst". No sentiments, nothing about the person who's passed. Just self absorbed focus on how this year sucks (they all suck apparently if I were to listen to people yearly). I wish we'd celebrate the person by default instead.

MF DOOM was one of the greats. One of the only reasons I could get into hip hop. Really heartbreaking.

I like to take the other perspective and take some time to appreciate what they gave to the world.

It's not so much a loss as it is a chance to celebrate what still remains, and to not take it for granted or keep expecting more.

For anyone reading this news, MF DOOM's work takes on a new life as people come to experience it for themselves, for the first time.

> Expecting a year to contain itself is what leads to this yearly disappointment everyone seems to experience.

This thought reminds me of Utah Phillips in Ani DiFranco's song "Bridges":

> Fifties, sixties, seventies, nineties, that whole idea of decade packages. Things don’t happen that way. The Vietnam War heated up in 1965 and ended in 1975. Well, what’s that got to do with decades? No, that packaging of time is a journalistic convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important events and important ideas. I defy that.

(And I say this having myself just told a family member that I'm sure people everywhere are happy for 2020 to be over.)

“The past didn’t go anywhere” - great album, I haven’t played it in years but some lines come to mind regularly.

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