How Covid Changed My Life …
It was the time in 2019 when everything was going as usual 💁🏻♀️.
Early, Dec 2019 was the time when Wuhan, China outbreak happened but still World was normal, our lives were normal again as usual.
It was hard to define:- What is Normal until Covid-19 started across Globe, at least for me.
For me it was more like: If you have never tasted a bad apple, you will never be able to find a difference between what a good Apple means.
I remembered in 2019, I went to visit my family back in India. In March 2020, went on vacation to Netherland, even till that time everything was very casual in Germany, except shortage of Sanitiser🧴 and Toilet Paper🧻 🤦🏻♀️. When I came back from the Netherland trip, suddenly but since then everything got changed. In the next few days, News across the globe was all about Corona. Every country did lockdown, restrictions, people lost their jobs and lives, domestic violence increased … really painful to think about the situation again.
Felt like everything is Paused Except time ⏳.
For me it was hard too, thinking🤔 how I am gonna survive without going out and not meeting people. But that was not an option at all. So, thought why don’t I try to do the stuff which I wanted to do for a long time, actually since my childhood which was apparently writing and that was the time when I started writing my blogs and also started teaching again after 11 years along with my professional job in IT, the difference was this time I was teaching Technology and the reason behind that was :
I felt myself to be privileged being in IT because at least I have the flexibility to do work from home and get paid.
Think and compare yourself being it Software Industry versus people who lost their jobs and struggling to survive e.g. hawkers, shopkeepers, restaurants workers, etc.
That’s how I kept myself busy, pursuing what I liked to do.
By the way, I forgot to mention that I was really good at writing poems and lyrics since I was a kid but thanks to my shyness it gave chance to others to become stars and not me.
But again, coming back to Corona time. I kept myself hard and brave until the mid of 2021 when Oxygen shortage Crisis was on the Top in India. Now people were dying more because of Oxygen shortage instead of Covid. Of course, Covid was the trigger but those lives could have been saved if, we had sufficient Oxygen. It was hard to keep my emotions within myself, I cried a number of times seeing the dead bodies all over the media channels and that was the time also when I lost my Uncle.
Till today, Dec 2019 was the time when I visited my family. I had plans to visit in Dec 2021 but then, exactly during my visit time, the Omicron variant came. I hope you all imagined what would have happened.
YES, I canceled my flight with pain in my heart and tears in my eyes, because my parents didn’t want me to come in such a bad situation, to be more specific: after seeing the chaos at Delhi Airport they said NO. And believe me, in this whole time, I still don’t feel that my Uncle is no more with us rather I feel it more as some kind of bad dream.
I never liked Berlin, the place where I live before Covid because I felt people here are so grumpy and nobody cares about you or whatever you do. But now, I do like and love Berlin because it changed my point of view since Corona. Usually, Berliners don’t care but when you need them they will be with you even if you don’t ask. During corona, everyone was so supportive of each other.
Not only that, Berlin is the place where people will fight for you and stand by your side if they see something wrong is happening to you.
People here don’t care what you do, how you look, what you wear etc but they do care about your rights and that’s also why Berlin is also famous for having protests every other day.
From a Professional point of view, I never did work from home before. For me, it was pretty clear that If I want to work, I will go to the office else stay home being on vacation. But now it's exactly the opposite, I am much more focused on doing home office and whenever I miss people, I go to the office.
Although, I understand it is difficult for many people because they used to meet people during their commute, office time, lunchtime and if they/you need anything it was super easy to talk to your colleagues who are sitting next to you and also to detach yourself from work but NOW you can’t.
That’s why I would like to request all of you, in order to have the same attachment even being remote by having your video ON while being on call, take some virtual break with your mates, try to make it at least a bit close to the real world what you used to have before Corona. Also, be flexible to talk and respond as I have seen many people who say the other person is directly asking me for a call… folks don’t act like a jerk, just imagine if you are working in a team and being remote, how will you be more productive if you always ask or waiting for a scheduled meeting?
Even enjoy your personal life as you used to do earlier, if you are working remotely it doesn’t mean that you need to work more than your working hours.
Remember if you stay healthy and focused you can do the same work during your working hours but if not then even if you sit for 15 hrs it will stress you out and result in nothing more.
Corona taught me a lot of lessons, some of them are listed below:
- Life is so fragile so Love it, Embrace it, Respect it and Enjoy it.
- Don’t take anybody or anything to be granted.
- Be empathetic.
- Don’t think about a reason to talk to someone.
- Help people as much as you can, it’s a tough time for all of us.
We have changed so much over time that we became so suspicious, competitive, and emotionless such that whenever anybody tries to contact us the very first thing that comes to our mind are:
* Why this person is calling or messaging me?
* Is this person need something from me?
* I should be prepared with some kind of excuse. What excuse should I make?
Let me tell you about an incident.
Since Corona started, I also started making it my habit to randomly ping my contacts to check how they are doing.
Recently, I messaged a person saying:
Me: How are you doing and how’s your day?
Do you know, what response I got?
Instead of saying, I am fine or ….
Other Person: Hi, How can I help you?
Me: No no, I was just checking how’s your day? I am all good and don’t need any help 😉.
One more incident or rather an observation, I had:
When you try to make people comfortable, and if they are not mature enough they take you for granted thinking that you are nice because you are weak but let me tell you if somebody is nice to you it's the person’s strength.
Seriously !!!!! but where are we going? Is this what we became?
Now, I know what Normal means… after all this.
When I started writing this blog, I was thinking while writing that I have a lot of things to tell and from where should I begin and where to end but I hope you all understood what I wanted to say.
Try to retrospect your past 2.5 years, hope you will find a lot of similarities with what I had.
And even if not, I hope you all are fine 😊 and healthy.
