IT IS usually only during extreme situations when things we have often taken for granted, would come out into the light and reveal themselves.
Perhaps, it is only natural that during ordinary times, when we go about our daily grind, that we tend to overlook anything from the simplest to the essentials. Being such, the myriad of these we unceremoniously set aside in favor of more pressing got-to-dos.
After already surviving a bit more than a year of this extraordinarily trying quarantine clime, discovering aspects about one’s self, for example, has become both a pleasant surprise and a chore.
This, based on perhaps too many casual conversations with some old old friends online (because it has really come to that; no more face to face encounters over beers), who have quite seriously taken my innocently- intended query, “how’s it hanging?”
Not to be mistakenly translated, the happy recollections about them so-called “good old days” still rule the Wi-Fi airwaves, yet it is always during those few and far between pensive moments, even among warriors and knights, where cracks in the armor shine bright.
Realizations and lessons from this covid new normal vary in the spectrum from positive to negative; from the discovery of having a resilient core against adversity, to appreciating long forgotten talents that doubly work as survival kits, then sadly to reconnecting to forgotten childhood fears and rekindling with that old feel of panic, once as a child.
Above all these however, the one realization that has stood out for me as an observer has been, in spite of our shared 10 to 15 years of schooling together, we have all actually lived completely different lives thereafter. Anf then knowing that all have been handed different handicaps, pains and struggles and maybe gifted later with our own share of earned triumphs and accomplishments.
Another is realizing that in spite of the cool demeanor one might put up during casual chats, what one is going through at the moment especially during this pandemic, is unknown to us.. Sadder thing is, this is accurately true even though some are close to us.
However, the most downer realization of all is finding that, as a rant mechanism for all the struggles of the past, extending to the bleak uncertainties of the now, many have opted the easier flex of comparing one as more accomplished from the rest, losing track of the fact that each of us is just too uniquely multi-faceted enough to be compared with or even contrasted with one another.
While we may have had, like practically everyone, gotten our own cake slice of misfortune and pain, this is exactly where we can use the element of contrast, as in contrasting the bad times with a glimpse of a better time in the future. A silver lining perhaps for these hard times.
As such, instead of comparing ourselves with others to push us up further in the caterpillar pillar, why not celebrate in all that sets us apart, so we can lighten this place up. Whoever said, with all its sham and drudgery, it is still a beautiful world, is not at all far from the truth you know.
