We take life for granted. We don’t appreciate the endless nights we spend with family and friends. Meeting someone over coffee has become random and totally unexciting. Until strict lockdowns and quarantines have become part of our lives.
We are now forced to stay home. To be alone with our thoughts and maybe that’s what we truly fear. It’s not our closets that need rearranging, it’s our priorities. I think we are slowly learning this during these hard times.
I live on the 9th floor. I went out on the balcony just to get some fresh air and to feel the sun on my skin. I saw the blooming trees and the sunny sky. Then I also saw the empty streets, if we don’t mind the cat hiding under a car. I heard the silence.
It’s so sad that we have to miss out on the spring. We have to miss out on nature, listening to the chirping of the birds only from afar.
People feel exhausted; they feel trapped in their homes, in their minds. They feel like someone is squishing their freedom with pliers.
They feel the burden of the loss of life, they feel disillusioned. And they are right to feel that way. It’s not just the streets that are empty, it’s the people that are void of strength, some of hope even. Because they lost people they cared for in an instant.
People are terrified to go to work for fear of passing on the virus to their family.
You can’t expect people to shift their mindset right way. I mean, one day they go shopping for spring clothes and hair ornaments, and the next day you tell them that if they go out, they may be responsible for the death of their closest ones.
People are in constant fear. They are under stress, which is going to reveal itself only after we’ve dealt with the Coronavirus successfully. We will not be the same.
Do you think everything ends with the treatment of the last infected person? No, everything starts with that. The economic crisis, the disillusionment, the fear of commitment, germophobia, nostalgia, guilt…you name it.
Who’s to blame? No one and everyone, I guess. No one because we didn’t know what we were fighting not that long ago. Everyone because if we could go back in time, we would all do things differently. We would all reconsider.
There have been 8.990 victims so far. And there will be more.
Our siblings, our friends, our acquaintances woke up one day with the thought of going to work and then coming back to their families. Just another normal day, which they never got to experience. Who knows how many of them didn’t get to see their loved ones for one last time, nor did they manage to tell them just how much they love them. Now that scars the living.
You see all these empty streets, but soon, they will be full of life again. They will be full of people and you’ll think that we’re back to normal, but you won’t see the empty souls and the empty people who’ll have to walk this Earth forever changed. With a burden on their shoulders and with a sense of unjustified guilt that will never go away.
It is undeniable that our lives won’t be the same anymore. We’ve lost too much. But we can weaken the influence this pandemic has brought into our lives by doing something.
We all need to do something for the sake of those lying on those beds fighting our common enemy. Work from home, do some volunteering if you live alone, and every time you think whether you should wash your hands or not – wash them.
Buy the groceries for your elderly neighbors and remind them to stay home safe. Wear masks. Because the consequences are immediately seen and will stick around unless we do something. For our families, for our friends, for the doctors. Especially for the doctors, who won’t be able to fight this battle for much longer unless we help them.
