COVID lessons

If there is anything called as divine intervention or anything called nature’s way of teaching, it baffles me no end. What exactly are the lessons we are learning in this pandemic?

1. Social distancing? Last I checked, the humanity was already falling apart with isolationism. What we needed was in fact people to come closer together. No?

2. Masks? God, when did I last see honest to goodness and a real human, not putting up a facade! Nature wanted us to learn putting on a mask!

3. No traveling? For all the advances in human sociology driven by transportation revolution, we are way more disconnected and ignorant of the world. We are already too divided by nationalism, geographies race and culture. Nature felt the need to bring home hyper localism?

4. Humans’ resistance against virus. Really? We call viruses evil because they mutate to overcome the vaccines we build to destroy them. And what do we call humans who evolve against the nature’s creation to build a stronger force to fight nature? Nature must see that humans are the fastest and probably the nastiest virus that has survived thus far.

5. To each his own. That's what we are taking out from the current situation. It started by humans against virus. Next stage, each nation to themselves, then we broke it down to ‘states on their own’ and let’s not forget the massive humanitarian crisis we created for ourselves through internal migration. We got divided into zones and districts, then localities and communities (many choosing to the have their own quarantine as well). Down to apartment and floors and individual apartments and families. What happened to the spirit of ‘We’ and ‘Us’?

Lastly, fear and not courage? Our actions and in equal measures, our inaction are driven by fears. So why did we need the extra dose of pandemic to discover that? And if pandemic is the greatest marketing tool that nature developed to land us some learning, I am left wondering what that divine lesson is that merits the method.

COVID-19 Insights

List of things that I am learning about the human race during this lockdown

(Tongue-in-cheek)

1. Bake it to fake it - Human’s most common response to being isolated and cut off from their fellow humans, is to start baking and cooking. Most importantly, they need to inform others of this feat, preferably concurrently, to convey their well-being and joy.

2. Law of human attraction - It has now been proven beyond doubt, across a robust sample of humans of different race, nationality and religion. Large section of human population is incapable of surviving if separated by more than 6 ft from other homo sapiens. Law of human attraction ensures that at the first given opportunity, they try to get together, even if they are complete strangers.

3. Minimalism will not lead to extinction of human race. Humans have now been proven to survive on basic food, low level of induced entertainment, without even the psychological need for shopping, without all the fancy clothes and adornments to make them appealing and also unnecessary traveling around. Freud slipped on himself.

4. Work expands to fill the time and space available. Work is the reason why humans exist, without which, irrespective of the above 3, they will perish. So humans can work alone, in the office, at home, over phone, over video calls, any time of the day, with or without food and rest. Full time employment, part time, consulting, contracting, moonlighting or any other form or shape of work. Of course, important to mention that oxygen was assessed to be somewhat equally important to survive.

5. Human belief is the most fundamental law of the universe and may be the only one that might exist. It was seen in history, the belief that earth is at the center of universe, actually forced sun and moon to travel around earth. In the current context, our belief around health, hygiene is once again forcing other species like viruses to change their behaviors and adapt to human’s understanding of how they should spread, multiply or inhabit different places. This is evident in the confidence with which humans have thrown aside all sanitization and hygiene - masks, use of sanitizers, washing hands etc. If humans believe that they don't need these, viruses have shown utmost willingness to amend their biology and just get out of the way. Allegedly, mumbling ‘inke muh kaun lage’