Are We Alone In The Darkness?
As of today April 17th 2021, 2,996,305 people have lost their life to COVID-19 globally. As we look back through time to a little over a year ago, we entered this pandemic essentially leading the blind. The world didn’t have the proper resources at the time to fully prepare themselves for what happened, and what is still happening.
March 13th 2020, the United States declared a U.S. National emergency.
All the business around the world shuddered at the sight of financial ruin, mom and pop business began to crumble, big corporations began shutting down branches of their corporate offices and sending everyone home. This is the day the world will always remember as the day the world literally stopped.
People were being sent home, unsure of their livelihood, unsure what was to happen as the sun set on that day. People were laid off, fired, or ultimately struggled with choosing to pay a medical bill or feed their family. The world was locked into their homes, only to look out of their windows to see the world, like animals locked in a cage. Unable to connect with society as we formally knew it.
I remember in the early days of the pandemic, heading to Costco, only to find lines of people stretching for what seemed like miles out into the parking lot. This is something I have never experienced in my lifetime. You could see the fear, the concern, the anguish in people eyes, hearts, and minds. As they lined up, I remember feeling an odd sense of discomfort, fear, and reluctance in seeing this line. As I got into the line myself, I began imagining the days of the First, and Second World Wars, I began imagining the struggles people faced during the Great Depression and even as recently as the 2008 Market Crash.
This sensation made me look into the crowd of people in exasperation, in agony at the fact that for the first time in over ten years, we unfortunately see a heighten sense of human struggle, of greed by corporations who are price gouging, a sense of loss at what to do or how to cope.
Seeing this sad sight made me wonder, where are we going next? Where is the rest of the world struggling most from this pandemic?
Is there an end to the long night?
As we sit alone in the silence of our minds, our memories deceive us. Showing us moments of our lives where we were most happy, excited, or ready to conquer the world head on. Now when we look around us we see images hanging in picture frames, or on our phones and we often miss the life we could have had in 2020. Even today, as we sit tight hoping that this year of 2021 changes, we know that we are running the risk that it might make a slow change back to normal.
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. The world we see today is not the same world we will see tomorrow. Over the last year, we have learned to grow, grow to become better individuals, better spouses, better friends, better humans overall. I think this pandemic has taught us what it means to be human, and what it means to struggle, but it has also taught us the value of chasing after our lives, our dreams, and our goals. COVID has taught us to live in the now, to focus on the positive moments of our lives and let go of the past while dreaming big about the future!