It’s weird how malleable our perception of time is. People have long observed that as we age, time seems to pass more quickly, and that how engrossed we are in whatever we’re doing affects how we experience the passage of time (see: “time flies when you’re having fun” or “I was playing a game and lost track of the time”).

The pandemic has been particularly hard on our mushy human sense of time. It simultaneously seems like these last seven (yes, seven!) months since my community first started sheltering in place have flown past and dragged on forever. We remember how the world worked before COVID with nostalgia, but forget how very recent that time was.

A particular example really struck me a week or so ago. (There’s another instance of losing track of relative time. This particular thought might’ve come up last week or last month, for all I can remember. I frequently find myself thinking back to somwhat-recent-but-long-passed events, and then realize they happened that morning.) I got to thinking about how everything had changed for film and television production, and that we’d end up waiting just ages between series of Doctor Who.

Then it struck me that Series 12 was this year. That happened in 2020. I watched an episode with my friends a Gallifrey One^* just this past February.

We’re many months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and my country in particular is failing wildly in containing its spread. Humans are bad at things like statistics and understanding risk, and Americans—who have been acculturated to value “rugged individualism” (ugh)—are additionally bad at doing things for the greater good at the cost of individual convenience. So it both feels like it’s already been going on forever and appears like it will continue… forever.

At moments like these I really wish the Doctor would pop in to visit me and give me some encouraging words. I mean, according to the adventures we’ve been privy to, humanity makes it long-term. We expand out among the stars (like a virus… wait—bad analogy), having clearly made it through some terrible stuff on our home planet. Surely we’ll make it through this, too.

But the details just might do me in. I mean sure, humanity might survive, but at what cost? And that doesn’t mean that any particular state or institution (looking at you, US of A) will survive this Moment. While it may be true that “Darkness never sustains,” it can still last a helluva long time. What will we all have to survive to get through this?

Let me begin by making my stance crystal clear: Black Lives Matter.

Readers may or may not already know that I live in the Twin Cities—the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area in Minnesota. My cities have been in the news a lot these last couple of weeks after a white, then-member of the Minneapolis Police Department knelt on the neck of a Black man named George Floyd, resulting in Floyd’s death. Since then protests and riots have erupted across the world.

This certainly feels like one of those historic Moments—something the Doctor might pop in to visit, to witness in person. I almost thought I’d gotten used to that feeling, to recognizing in realtime the unfolding of events that future generations (should humanity survive) will see as significant. The year 2020 has kept us all on our toes, though, and every time I’m still caught by surprise. “Wow,” I think to myself as something new crops up. “This is huge.”

The thing is, of course, that none of us can know just how huge any moment—any movement—will become. So what I try to remember is that if it’s something I believe in, I have to take part. No matter how small or powerless I feel in the face of massive, far-reaching societal injustices, I have to do something.