Experiences of Life; before and after 2020

[Shazib Riaz]

“When the going gets tough-the tough get going”. The day of 23 March 2020 started and ended as a normal day and during all those 24 hours, all things seemed normal too but the thing we didn’t know was that it was all the calmness before a storm. As, on the dawn of 24 March 2020, when the sunlight broke the darkness of the night we got the news of putting the whole Punjab in lockdown. As any other common man, I thought of the lockdown as a vacation. But that wasn’t the case. Though lockdown started as any other normal Sunday routine, but as it continued it brought the boredom and awkwardness which brought us to reality. All the big family, friends and other gatherings stopped to ensure social distancing. All day sitting at home added more boredom in ourselves. By the grace of Allah, I didn’t get affected from COVID-19. To overcome such emotional and physical changes, everyone adopted some new routine to kill the boredom. I also adopted some new things to pass my time. One of the things was to play online games with my friends whom I couldn’t meet due to lockdown. I also used to meditate to spend some time with myself. As the lockdown continued, everyone that was experiencing it just wanted to get rid of that ongoing routine. But eventually as the time passes, that passed too. “Time changes everything”. It changed me as well. As all the journey ended, I felt myself stronger. Stronger emotionally, stronger mentally, stronger physically and even healthier. Now I know importance of friends, and social life and now I try to become as much socially available as possible. One incident I would like to narrate here was the one where I and my family went to our village. As in lockdown inter-city transportation was not allowed, we went to village on motorbikes instead of car. This brought some positive impact in our life as we needed some refreshment and adventure in our lives. Now my hope for future will be that I will be more available for my family and friends and I will try utilize my every second of life and will try enjoy it with full enthusiasm with my dear ones. For revival of our economy and education system, people should work together as a united force. Students should spend more time on their studies as the lockdown had already damaged them. But in all that we should not spread hate with other people and should have a broad sense of view to deal with every problem. But the thing that people should adopt is to be religiously active too. All of us should pray 5 times a day and do as good as we can do as it will bring just calmness to ourselves. As I studied somewhere “And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines”.
Shazib riaz
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