Sometime around March 2020, the whole world changed (maybe even dramatically from your perspective), for better or for worse. Socially, economically, politically, and spiritually, we’ve all been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic which has claimed the lives of more than six million people – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe – as of mid-2022. Children stopped going to schools, thousands of businesses shut down, millions of employees lost their jobs, hundreds of governments and leaders around the world struggled as they did their best to provide logistics help to tens of thousands of oxygen-challenged, critically-ill people gasping for air in overwhelmed hospitals and makeshift medical facilities.

​The majority of people who were forced to resign or who voluntarily resigned from their jobs because of the crippling effect of the global lockdown has resulted in a massive awakening to the practical and economic value of working from home - in the era of Zoom Meetings, Virtual Assistants, (and TikTok entertainment). ​

​Incidentally, because of the novelty and dreaded apocalyptic, doom and gloom backdrop of Covid-19 (that looks like a script from a Hollywood disaster/doomsday movie popular in the ‘90s and early 2000s), people had a sense of panic and a constant reminder of life’s impermanence. It makes us realize that ever since the onslaught of the Covid-19 nightmare, we know that there’s no better time to spend valuable moments with our family and loved ones than today, more than ever. This modern era pandemic has heightened our sense of mortality in a way that greatly improved how we choose to spend our time because we’ll never know when a new and much worse pandemic than Covid-19 would wreak havoc from an economic and life-and-death standpoint. People have also become more health conscious, with the immediate goal of strengthening their immune system in the event that another dangerous variant of the virus starts to spread and that would eventually spiral down to horror show territory. I’m sure thousands, if not millions, have turned spiritual, or have become closer to God since the start of the pandemic to ask for divine favor and protection from a life-threatening virus and to experience enlightenment about what’s in store for us from a biblical perspective. Is this the start of the Great Tribulation? Or if you’re a Muslim, what does Allah wants you to do when there is a plague affecting every being on earth?

​It didn’t help though that there are conspiracy theorists, fear mongers, skeptics, fake news peddlers, and the devil-may-care types everywhere who spread unnecessary and damaging information to sow confusion and terror (in an already confused and terrified general populace), or maybe because they just want to enforce their opinions on others, even though we all know that not all opinions are valid. If your opinion is that the earth is flat, is that a valid conjecture? Or is the Earth billions of years old or is it less than ten thousand years? Well, let’s not even get into that. But having said that, all the cynicism, negative outlooks and unfair judgement about the origin and cause and effect of the virus only triggered more divisiveness and hate in a world that’s already full of gloat, mistrust, corruption and greed among its people. Fortunately, in the post-vaccine Covid-19 world, we’ve started to get back to the old life we’ve been used to after two years of living inside this Covid-19 bubble. With wearing of face masks and vaccine requirements being implemented, people have returned to watching concerts and movies as pandemic restrictions become relaxed. Marathon running events and many other sports competitions and activities that involve a huge number of crowds and participants have come back as strong as ever. 

In the Philippines, the presidential elections were held recently last May, with mammoth crowds attending official rallies of popular candidates during the campaign period, as if the still ongoing pandemic has become an afterthought. But as much as we try to return to our old lives, life would never be the same again because we are witness to a large-scale disaster that has reached all four corners of our planet and that would forever remind us that life is really just a cycle of being here one moment, and being permanently gone the next. The emotional and psychological damage the pandemic left in those who lost loved ones are serious, (to put it mildly), since the vast majority of those they’ve lost never had the chance to be visited and be surrounded by family and close friends in their dying days and hours. In the office workforce, young people would rather work from home most days and will not hesitate to resign from their jobs if this desire or wish to turn their bedrooms or living rooms into a workplace is not respected and granted by their employers. This is in the setting of a world that’s adjusting and adapting to a new normal which has become a blessing in disguise for many office workers who are eager to free themselves from the toxic environment at work, while being able to spend quality time with their family at home. As if employers would not welcome this change. It’s part of our evolution; that in the near future robots or artificial intelligence would eventually take over and do most of our jobs, making humans virtually obsolete.

The world has been reset or rebooted to some extent because we will never see life again in the same way we did before March 2020. A new virus has been introduced to our existence and will forever remain part of our lives according to science. But with this we learned to become more resilient, positive and even stubborn as we recover from the last stages of the pandemic. People are now looking for better jobs, investing in new businesses, learning new skills, pursuing old passions and hobbies, engaging in new activities, rekindling friendships, spending more time with family and loved ones, and basically just appreciating more and doing things that matter most in life. To make life more livable and easier. Covid-19 taught us that life is fleeting and unpredictable.

“That life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”