2020- The Year We All Needed But Didn’t Know It.
If You’re Reading This, I Wish You A Very Happy New Year And I Hope You Have The Strength To Carry On No Matter How Hard It’s Gonna Get.
It’s the 3rd of January 2021. Time has just flown by and seems like we don’t have any sort of grasp over it. The COVID-19 pandemic is still a conversation, more questions than answers as with anything in life, work from home is now the new way of working which most of us seem to have conformed to, uncertainty in the minds of everyone never knowing when the next lockdown will come or whether it will come.
It’s not been easy for any of us. No matter how privileged we are and comfortable we are in our own homes with our Netflix subscriptions and smartphones, 2020 just seemed to make sure we feel like shit a little extra no matter how much we tried to avoid it. We never expected a life where we TOLD to stay at home or you will face consequences and we definitely did not expect a mask to be more essential than our iPhones, fancy cars and wallets. We saw videos on the spread of the Coronavirus in Wuhan probably somewhere in January 2020 or maybe earlier and we were either ignorant or stupid to think, “this is not coming our way” and months later Life decided to repeat its biggest lesson of all, Expect The Unexpected AND BAM, LOCKDOWN.
No partying, no Friday night clubbing, absolutely nothing. Felt like a movie. Daily reports on cases shooting up, anxiety building, hypochondria elevating, we all thought that we were sick at some point or at least I did. We see people losing their shit and jumping out of the quarantine centers, racism elevating, anger and frustration elevating. Probably the most unstable we’ve felt in a very long time. Looking back on it, does not seem to be a very bad time though does it? Funny how that works.
Businesses crashing. People losing their jobs, people going hungry, people forced to live on the streets, kids starving and a hundred other shitty things we’ve had to either witness or be victims of. 2020 made the things which seemed certain, uncertain in a matter of hours. You thought you had job security? 2020 certainly took that away. You thought it’ll go off in a few months? 2020 made sure that didn’t happen. I remember how I felt back in April 2020, that was a storm. I was not doing well. Anxiety was its peak, wondering what now? Why now? It was crazy but by God’s grace I was able to have the strength to take the punches and keep going.
I’m not writing this to recap on how shitty the year was overall. I’m writing this to tell you how 2020 changed my perspective on what Life should be for all of us, let alone me. We were social beings, we were out doing our thing losing track of our time. We got attached to this routine of work where working only meant physically leaving the house and heading to office. We did not keep in touch with the ones we loved the most, not because we don’t love them but because we were too involved in our own little world that we couldn’t take the time to say “Hey, How you? I missed you”. I believe I’ve done well in that area before the pandemic but there was a few who I should’ve reached out to but I didn’t because I was too involved in my own thing and that’s a regret I’m going to have to live with.
We forgot to pay attention to the little things in life and what we failed to understand is that those little things are the tiny puzzles which can put things together and make you whole. To add some perspective, before the pandemic my life revolved around this need to be better at what I do. Nothing and nobody can be a burden to it. I’d be thinking about work all the damn time, even dream about it on some nights, freak out about it sometimes and do whatever it took to be good at what I do. I just don’t like to suck at something.
It’s a good drive to have but what I failed to understand is that it’s just a variable into what makes you who you are. There’s other things you need to pay attention to in life to make you whole. It could be showing love and affection to the ones you can’t stop thinking about without fail, exercising and making sure your body stays fit or a simple thing such as having a cup of tea at 6pm with no distractions. It’s important, a lot more important than you think.
One significant lesson the pandemic taught me was that the more you dive deep into this ignorant lifestyle, the more shit that’s going to come your way. It’s inevitable. You can’t distract yourself from things, because all it takes is a lockdown for you to realize you’ve got things in your subconscious which you have not attended to.
You realize that the type of car you drive matters less and having a car which can take you from A to Z is a privilege on its own. You realize that the farmers out there play a significant role in our lives a lot more than the governments wish to acknowledge. Having money which can buy you essentials is something we shouldn’t take for granted.
I’ve heard stories of people dying from starvation. I heard a story of how a daily wage earning Father killed himself because he was unable to get food for his family. I cannot imagine going through that. It goes to show how privileged we really are.
Acknowledging our privilege does not mean we’re denying that we have problems of our own. We tend to confuse what “Acknowledging our privilege” means. It has more to do with acknowledging so that we can help someone we believe is less privileged and that’s what life is all about, Togetherness. I remember being part of a project where we gave out food to a lot of families in the Gampaha District and in Panadura and it brought a tear to my eye when I saw a granny in line waiting to take food to her loved ones. I’ve attached a video of her below.
My advice to you from we’ve learnt from 2020. Hold on tight to the ones you love no matter how hard it is because life can take them away from you very quickly. Stop letting petty nonsense be the cause for long term damage. Focus on being a better “Overall You” and not just a “Career You” so that you will one day look back on life and feel whole. Life is an endless series of shit and its time we stop fighting and figure out a way to solve it.
My wish for you, for whoever is reading this. I hope you have the strength to hold on tight to whatever shit that’s going to come your way. To hold on tight no matter how hard it is to hold on. The easiest thing to do is walk away. Things are definitely not going to get any easier and it’s time we embraced that.
All The Best for 2021!
