We know COVID-19 kills and it has disrupted the lives and economies of countries worldwide, with lockdowns in many places around the world. But one thing the lockdowns have achieved is not talked about much.
By forcing people to slow down, to stay indoors, sometimes alone or with family, sometimes away from dear but elderly family members, it has awaken people to what matters, it has awaken those people who have a soul.
Especially in the USA, where people often don’t even get a vacation or a maximum of 2 weeks compared to 6 weeks in other Western countries, people have awaken. In the USA, where people are always hustling to make ends meet, to reach the American dream, where lunch breaks are a quick sandwich and getting home means rush hour traffic and then vegetating in front of the TV to get ready to hustle again the next day. In the USA, where many services are lacking that are offered free of charge by other governments, and people worry about lack of healthcare, expensive school tuition, debts, rent, mortgage, car lease bills that have to be paid, there are too many worries to allow people to pay attention to what matters.
Until COVID-19 came to USA and the lockdown happened.
Let’s be clear that the viral infection is a dangerous disease for many people and a great tragedy for humanity, with so many people losing their lives and others having lost a loved one to the disease.
But to the survivors or those untouched by the disease so far, it has been eye-opening. By being forced to lock down, people were forced to slow down, to reflect about the meaning of life and death, something that people where not able to do before. Especially in the USA, a country that leaves its citizen so vulnerable to all sorts of hardships. So many people were just going about their daily activities, hustling, not paying attention to a cancer growing in the core of the country, metastasizing from the White House to the Republican congress and Republican states.
But now, people have realized there is not just a pandemic in the country but also a cancer.
They woke up.
They realized how important and fragile human life is. They realized how much they had taken for granted. They realized what really matters in life: Love and a good life.
When you see a change in the polls, when you remember the marches for George Floyd, and everything that happens from now on, when you see people’s attitudes and opinions change, consider that it is because people had a chance to reflect, and they all saw the cancer growing and the pandemic sweeping the country, and they realized, you can’t fight the pandemic and ignore the cancer. Both kill. We have to get rid of both.