THE 2020 AWAKENING

      The last couple of weeks or months depending on your peculiar situation, more than half of the world’s human population has been on a ‘lockdown’; a security term whose primarily meaning is ‘the confining of prisoners to their cells, typically in order to regain control during a riot’. This word, which was hardly used, has now become a vocabulary so common that not a day passes without one using it at least once. 

      This is what our world has become. A tiny virus, which we cannot even perceive with our naked eyes, has locked all of us in the ‘prisons’ of our own homes. Who wakes up thinking of viruses? Majority of the world’s population don’t really consider viruses in the scheme of things they consider important in their lives. 

      But here we are, startled stopped in our tracks, halted from doing all the things we spend our lives chasing after on a daily basis, because a ‘tiny insignificant virus’ now has our attention. For the not so old, this might be the greatest adversity that has befallen the entire world in our lifetime. To those who experienced the world wars, I don’t know how the two compare. 

      Everybody has been confined to their homes. I want to believe we all love our homes. Yes, but we would love a little walk every now and then, some window shopping and even some real shopping. Our lives have changed. We are no longer in ‘normal’ times. The things we considered ‘mundane’ are luxury because we crave for them but we cannot do them since we want to secure our safety and that of our loved once.  
      From the lowly to the mighty, from the haves to the have nots, from nonentities to celebrities, from the poor to the rich from peasantry to royalty, all have not been spared, by this ‘insignificant virus’. From superpowers to less powerful nations, all have been shocked by this virus. 

      The whole world is in a state of disarray. Governments are at their wits end, scientists can’t say ‘eureka’ yet. Yet we keep hope alive, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

      This should be a time of retrospection and introspection.That there is something higher and bigger than all of us. Let us descend from out high horses, and acknowledge that fact. What do you consider important? Is it you house, your parents, your spouse, your children, your job or your car? None of these can protect you from this ravaging virus.  

      Let us ask ourselves this fundamental question. That at the end of it all, what is the essence of it all?