The outbreak of Covid-19 has seemingly brought us into a new era. Despite a few genii arguing that a simple virus cannot alter the lives of supreme humans, yet here we are locked inside the four walls of our home from the past few months. All the narcissistic thoughts apart, I strongly believe that human life can be compared to a balloon. No matter how big, a little needle can destroy it. Just like how a simple lifeless organism was enough to flip our human life upside down.

Maybe we’ve forgotten, but life is all about adapting to changes around us. We are so proud of ourselves that we built an entire civilization in such a way that it is nearly impossible for us to imply major alterations in order to adapt to changes. You don’t even need to look closely but you’ll find that life around us has become stagnant, monotonous. Only a fool would return unchanged after the lockdown.

There were a number of things we thought would never change- Mode of education, Economy, Healthcare (literally, there are too many of them to fit in this article).

At this point, you might be thinking about how is all this related to the title of the article. Read this out, if we zoom in our perspective, tell me, are the global economy and world politics the only things you thought that wouldn’t change?

Look around you, did you think that you could survive without eating junk for this long? Didn’t you think that parties and concerts were the best ways to socialize with your friends? It’s interesting how a global pandemic can alter our life at a very personal level.

Allow me to draw a connection in order to show how total chaos around the world had an impact on most of us on a very personal level.

The greatest problem our generation has is dealing with our parents. The reasons are very obvious. On one hand, our generation was under immense pressure to get good grades and to get into a better college that we spent around half of our time in educational institutions. On the other hand, our parent’s generation was under a strong impression that educating their children is the sole thing of importance that they spent around half of their lives working hard. The amount of our time spent with them is where the problem lies.

Before writing this article, I traveled back in time (yes, I have a personal time machine parked under my bed) to see when was the last time I spent quality time with them before this lockdown. Not to much surprise, it was in my middle school. After that, my parents gifted me a ‘pressure to be no.1’ as I entered high school. Gradually, the hours to study increased along with my coaching fee and decreasing the time spent with my family.

Do you not see a pattern here?

We stopped spending time with our family exactly when we hit our teen years. That is the phase where we change not only physically but mentally. So, practically our parents are stuck with the mental image of ‘pre-teen’ us. They have little to no idea that a ‘post-teen’ us exist. Every teen’s problem right there- “My parents never understand me”. That’s because our society never gave them a chance to experience their child’s gradual growth into adulthood. No matter how great of an idiot you’ve turned into, you are still your parent’s good, angelic child.

Personally, this experience was on a whole new level. The last two years of my life potentially eliminated any remaining connections with my family (Bold of you NOT to assume that I’m from You-Know-Which junior college). I had to wake up at 5 every morning, attend classes from 7 am to 8 pm and it was 8:30 by the time I reached home. Usually, I was too tired to even eat. Interacting with my parents was totally a different story. It was so bad, that my parents didn’t even know what else I did apart from going to college. Including the simplest of things like playing video games or using social media.

I’ve heard that if you do something for 21 days then it becomes your lifestyle. Guess what? I did something for more than two years. At some point, I even forgot why I was hiding my true self from them. For unknown reasons, I even thought that they would get very angry if they found out that I used my mobile for ‘not very educational’ purposes. The fear inside me as to how my parents would react if they came to know that I use my phone had grown unbelievably strong that I hid all my apps on my phone. I even felt uncomfortable sharing my views with them. Eventually, there was only fear left for them and a sense a responsibility to prove my worth. My parents were constantly worried about my behaviour. Their concerns didn’t make any sense to me, that is until the lockdown started.

Lockdown had my father work from home and made me come out of my room. Shamefully, it was awkward to eat on the same table as my OWN family. How many days do you think I’d have lasted in their plain sight? The answer is none. My father found out I played video games on my phone the first day and my mother found that I had social media accounts the day after. The responses were not normal. They were surprised. But to my actual surprise, they were totally cool with it. That is when I realized that I was the one chickening out over simple stuff.

The next few days had been great. If we look closely, the lockdown has been an amazing opportunity to spend some time with our family. Trust me, all our teenage problems can be solved in a span of a wink. Learn and adapt- the statement neither applies for a survival game show nor is it the terminology for evolution. Just try to learn and adapt on a personal level and watch in disbelief as your life races towards the top.

Humans are meant to be social beings. The final outcome of this quarantine is that my dumb-self has learned to be a human again.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s how a deadly virus and a global shut down mended relations with my family.

“Perfect were those days before the quarantine. But are you sure that the days after quarantine would not be your best?”

 

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