Living with Covid

Living with COVID

It’s been exactly 2 weeks since I started having symptoms and tested positive for COVID. Fortunately, I made it through with relatively mild symptoms. For someone who’s leaning more on being a “workaholic,” it was a blessing. I gave into feeling sick and got to catch up on some streaming shows — I guess that’s called, “binge watching,” which I hardly get to do.

I’ve made a conscious effort to ease back into working late last week, yet I notice I have a hard time focusing. I’ve heard people talk about “COVID brain,” so I get to blame it on that! What this whole experience makes me reflect on, though, is how this virus has become a part of our life. Although this was my very first COVID and really hope I won’t get it again, by now I know so many people who have had it if not once but multiple times. Will this be with us for years to come?

In the beginning of the pandemic, it felt like “God,” power greater than this meek human species, actually hit a pause button on us. To me it felt deeply spiritual in those days when literally the whole world came to a halt. The images of empty major cities from around the world with clear sky and water, which would be otherwise polluted, are indelibly carved in my memory. Since then, so much has changed in our lives. We all adapted to new ways of living — trying to find a modicum of normalcy.

As we learn to live more mindfully, we get to accept how everything is today. We don’t have to like it, but we don’t have to be terribly disturbed by it, either. I believe in human resilience. Many people are already making different choices today in order to make our lives more manageable, to be closer to nature, to live more harmoniously, and to be more regenerative. Not to discount all the hardships COVID brought about, but if COVID brought more people to awaken to what’s more important in our lives, perhaps it was a blessing in disguise.

#YouCanSitWithUs