Over the course of an year, the world changed completely. From a physical space there was a quick transition to the online space in just a matter of months. Covid-19 being a perilous virus has impacted many communities and has taken numerous lives all over the world. From businesses shutting down, Stock markets crashing, oil prices collapsing, schools closing, to travel shutting down, Covid-19 has affected economies substantially. With many people losing their jobs, numerous children being orphaned, countless people dying of hunger, Covid-19 has taken the place of one of the most life-threatening viruses in the history of mankind.
Due to the various lockdowns over the past one year, people have been suffering emotionally, financially and socially. People all over the country are leading minimalistic and monotonous lives by rarely going out due to the fear of the deadly virus. With being stuck at home with nothing much to do and following the same routine everything, feeling overwhelmed, anxious, distressed, depressed, frustrated and angry are the most familiar feeling in today’s time. This also took a drastic toll on people’s physical health. With gyms, pools, public parks ,etc. being shut people don’t exercise as often as they would before. Public health measures such as social distancing, wearing masks are crucial steps to help reduce the spread of the virus but this can leave people feeling rather isolated and lonely. Hence, people feel secluded and alone which can lead to them going into depression and developing certain mental disorders.
Sharing of false information on social media can also be a major factor causing stress and anxiety in these trying times. This can create chaos and distrust amongst people leaving them being more lost and hassled. Nowadays, people spend hours on the internet to engage themselves by doing some online courses, watching movies, attending online classes, staying connected with loved ones. With everything being online, the screen time of individuals has increased intensely. This phenomenon has become so prevalent these days that it has been termed has ‘Zoom Fatigue’ or ‘Digital Burnout’. People tend to be low on self-esteem and generally feel exhausted, sad, lonely and anxious.
While on the contrary, the pandemic helped us to put view things with a different perspective. We started to value the importance of time and stopped taking things for granted. Personally for me, the numerous lockdowns helped me put things in perspective. As the saying goes “There is no right time, there is just time and what you choose to do with it.” In the earlier AKA pre-Covid days, it seemed as if time just flew by. The schedule of travel to school itself, travel back, coaching classes, extracurricular classes, homework, family time and the need to sleep in time was just a cramped series of activities which utilised all the hours available and then the pandemic hit us. Suddenly, we all were stuck at home and everything transitioned to being virtual. Except for back to back online classes, there was so much more time available to us and realisation dawned upon me that I had to utilise this time in a productive manner.
The same time that was earlier being used was now not to be wasted. I had more of it for myself, for family, for creativity, for studies and I resolved to do the same. It did take me some effort and discipline and I realised that it is not too tough to get the best value out of every moment. I think I have added a lot of value to myself, learnt a lot, build stronger ties, gained skills by participating in various extracurricular activities in and out of school and also had time to contribute more in raising and training my pet puppy into a dog.
These realisations and learnings have now built a firm belief in me about how we can make the best of every moment of time, grow better and contribute even more to everything around us.
The times are constantly changing and in times like these, we need to ensure that we stay resilient while being hopeful and having that spark of sanguinity can help us power through during the toughest of times.
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