Short Note in the Time of Pandemic

cr: twitter @lalabohang

I don’t know how frequent I’m complaining over things this year—that I realized it’s just passed for 6 months only. Still 6 months to go, really? I’m bored already. I’m stressed. I’m desperate. Life is so unstable. I want to go everywhere. How can I face this uncertainty? The future is so dark, I can’t even imagine. How could I survive?

Pandemic time indeed blinded us from focusing on the good things, after we’re befriend with dark side of the world since the day one. We tried to escape, yet have nowhere to go to. Have you ever thought that your life was so hard back then but you still know how to recover and have some fun, and now you just can’t treat your problems the same way? Now you don’t even know how to have fun because you’re always being overshadowed by the feeling of scared and anxiety. But, have you also stopped awhile and wondered, of how this pandemic gave you many lessons? How it makes you realized that your life before pandemic were showered with blessings? And how this pandemic makes you realized that you, used to, take things for granted?

Because I did. I just realized that I took too many things for granted before this pandemic happened.

At this weird time, small things start becoming precious: late night talks when you took overtime work at office, a small walk to mini market nearby to buy a cup of hot chocolate when your brain got stuck, weekend trips to some city parks, museum, or food stalls, even simply mall-hopping and a plate of good food after a tiring day… all seems not too special at first until we realized that we had so many ways to pay our efforts off, until we reach a stage where we’re running out of rewards and lacking of ideas on how to appreciate ourselves. Ended up we believe that we’re just stressed, depressed, and failed to make ourselves happy.

But how, just how, if we think of the contrary?

How if we, in the end, take this ‘abnormal life’ for granted when everything is already gotten back in place? Will we miss our bed at afternoon when we’re already going back to office? Will we miss grocery shopping and cooking by ourselves for lunch? Will we miss laundry activities during office hour break? Will we miss those days when we managed to save some times because we don’t need to commute? Will we miss those extra hours we got to do other things than work, even if we cannot see borderline of working and living during this hard time? Will we miss the time when we got to see nobody in person? And, after all, will we miss doing everything from home? At this point, the thought of how this pandemic makes us stronger, more empathetic, and equipped with higher survival spirit was rising. Until I can accept that life sometimes needs surprise—not necessarily all good, but good enough to train us some things that we cannot remarkably see.

Quoting what people always say to others during frustrating times: hang in there. Someday we might miss today, sitting at our backyard, sipping a cup of hot tea on a fine afternoon while reminiscing of how we fought, struggled to survive in the time of corona.

Hang in there!