Almost overnight, my life, no, the world collapsed around me.
Late February, I was going through something that left me shaken and stirred (but not in a good way). Then, I made a huge, pivotal decision in the first week of March. Then, the world went upside down and sideways up.
COVID-19 / Novel Coronavirus / SARS-CoV-2 grew from being “a weird flu in faraway Wuhan, China” to “the virus is in Malaysia, people will die and the economy will be f***ed”.
By the time Malaysia went under partial lockdown (politically-correct name: Movement Control Order), I was numb. By then, the grief was all-consuming.
It was bad enough to grieve for my own losses (which I hope to have the courage to share one day. Edit: I did share it in the end.). But like the rest of the world, I was grieving for the passing of an age.
There was the age “before Corona” and the age “after Corona”, where people are stripped away from community – the very lifeblood that we need to not just thrive but survive.
The age after Corona is uncharted territory.
I wanted to blog about COVID-19. But what can I write about? Listicles about COVID-19 felt trite and eye-roll inducing. Giving tops tips about working from home or “how to survive self-isolation “ seemed equally shallow and fake. I haven’t a clue and I’m certainly no expert.
In truth, I am just as dazed, confused and anxious as all of you. And I processed the whole situation the best way I could, by talking about it and sharing my uncensored thoughts with complete strangers on the Internet:
Here’s the deal. Humanity has been girnormously humbled by a tiny virus. Everything mankind had built civilization upon – her seemingly sturdy governments; commercial and financial systems and the technology and knowledge that has enabled our way of life is now on wobbly legs.
This global pandemic has painfully shown us how little control we have over, well, anything. And whatever control we had was illusory and our insistence and pride that we do is sheer arrogance.
It has also shown us that we cannot continue as we are.
A time to reflect
You may be self-isolating at home now. Realise that this is a rare opportunity for you to really reflect on your life.
Are you on the right path? Are you doing what you really want with your life? Should you fight hard to keep things as it is … or should you shake things up?
These were the questions that have been nagging me, but I was always too busy (perhaps, on purpose) to really sit down and figure out the answers.
During this partial lockdown I was forced to spend many hours with my own thoughts. I finally had the time to confront those scary questions.
I woke up to the fact that for too long, I’ve sacrificed my happiness in the present for some possible future happiness. This has led me to a life of compromises; a life where I denied my true inner desires and calling for the more practical path that society seem to insist we take.
I want to live my best life now.
I want to serve people, not just amass money so that I can have a comfortable retirement.
And I realise that living a life of compromise is far too risky at an age where you could be killed by something you picked up during a casual grocery run.
We sometimes live as if we have decades ahead of us and that our futures are guaranteed. But over the years I’ve lost friends unexpectedly – folks that I’d never think, in a million years, would go before their time. This pandemic has amplified that a thousand times over.
If there’s one thing COVID-19 has shown us, is that it does not discriminate. It’s infected princes, Oscar-winning actors, seniors with health problems, young folks with no health problems.
Do you dare to answer this question: If you knew you were going to die in a year, what would you do with your life today?
Would you finally release that dream from the lockbox where you’ve shoved it, saying, “I’ll get to it two years after I save more money?”
Would you continue to stay on at a job where you cry at the toilet stall every day?
Or would you finally put aside your buzzing smartphone and finally spend more time with your son?
COVID-19 is a huge wake-up call for us all.
Let’s not ignore the lessons that it’s teaching us.
Elizabeth Tai 