Once upon a time long, long ago we lived a life that now happens to be a dream for most of us.
A life where going to work and school used to be monotonous. But now we miss that same monotony. A life where we didn’t mind standing in groups waiting for our shawarma. A life where we said sorry when we bumped into someone unknowingly and it was all ok . A life we lived where we didn’t have to think twice when a someone handed us a cart in a shopping mart.
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We all lived in a land where we didn’t mind sitting in a bar or a restaurant all cramped up. A time when we spent our money lavishly on buying luxury and exquisite brands as we all had jobs, at least most us did. We lived a time when we went to each others homes to celebrate their happiness or to mourn their demise. A time when we visited churches, temples, mosques or other places of worship to give praise to the almighty. We all lived our life to the fullest and wished to do the same in the future. But by the end of December there came an earthquake, an earthquake in the form of the most virulent disease ever faced by mankind – COVID-19. An earthquake whose tremors are still being felt around the world.
There will be a time when people will look back and see this as a time when things changed in their life. A lot of our lives are habitual, and habits are highly effective in helping us work, look after our families and pursue our goals. What a shock to the system does is change those habits. People work and travel in a different way, their daily routines and the very rhythm of their lives change, including when they eat and how they communicate with their families. And when you are forced to do things differently, new habits begin to form. And it takes merely 21 days to build a new habit and 90 days to build a permanent new lifestyle change and now its been almost 5 months in lockdown with a few relaxations. So have we become habituated to this or not is yet to see.
Analysts say the pandemic and the measures we are taking to save ourselves could permanently change the ways in which we live, work, worship and play in the future.
We are also bound to see major changes in religion and technology can’t help in this. Even though we can appreciate sermons online but without the human touch and the sacred ambience offered by rituals and holy sites, the very meaning of religion is in danger. This is so important since rituals often symbolize the essence of religion. Visiting religious places give people spiritual experiences, and without proper engagement, that experience could be undermined. In other words, religion – one of the biggest source of culture for the human being, the epistemology of society – will never again be the same.
We are also seeing governments providing assistance to banks and companies to cushion the effects of both the virus and the lockdowns. This is mainly to keep the economy from collapsing even further.
These are just few ways in which a 19 (COVID-19) can change a 21 (21st century ) but all we got to do is wait and take each day at a time and see what awaits for us in the future.
