Pandemic Proven — Are You Ready For an Anniversary?
I am a church-going girl, so anything appropriate that happens in the world always causes me to reflect on spiritual or personal memories or thoughts. With this pandemic in full swing, yet something of the past, it is strange to find ourselves at an anniversary point. I mean, what is there to celebrate? The answer is always, “life” as this is the one thing I trust that the pandemic has taught us all to take seriously. It is marveling, recalling how something so seemingly innocuous, a virus, something that humans have been dealing with for centuries, has caused such an ungentle upending of our system. Granted it is not the same virus but the point remains: life is fleeting, fragile and unsuspecting and no matter what we know, we can hardly be prepared for curveballs, especially when we lollygag like humanity has on our known unifying principles.
Life’s surprises are many, yet its simple pleasures remain its chief cream-of-the-crop menu: love, in all its forms — time — with as many people as we love, is the only way to live and even survive. Family, friends, neighbors, cousins, pets, “essential workers…” all of these are what we need more of and ALL of the time.
Indeed, I remember in church circa, 2011 one of the preachers said, “When the world thinks everything is falling apart, for those who follow God, it will be that everything is coming together.”
This struck me, as I, who has been practically housebound for health reasons since 2015, was able to feel those debilitating symptoms lifting mid-pandemic. I was able to travel abroad, something that I would have loved to do multiple times a year, after nine years of being caught in America, and it was glorious!
I also found myself able to manage the stress of the pandemic better, and I think this is what helped the next steps open up for me. IWhen everyone else was stressed I was patient and calculating, thinking of how I could alleviate my own stress, rather than by complaining about it. Since then, I have been able to move out on my own and I am starting to rebuild other aspects of my life back, as I aim for financial independence and overall wellness.
I valued how the pandemic was able to unify us as a people, nation and world. I wish happiness can do the same, as I don’t know how often we all get to peek and see inside another and realize that we are really all the same. Our suffering was and is universal and my hope is that as we surmount this crisis, we can also surmount the mental constructs that prevented us from remembering that suffering is universial, and that the more we seek to help others, the more that we ourselves can receive that same kindness — particularly at this time when everyone in the world needs the same things.
