Leena Althekair – 12A
Quiz 1 Writing
Sunday, October 11, 2020
We tend to take things for granted. Whether it’s a good night’s sleep or a delicious lunch we come home to, the little things in life often go unnoticed although they mean the most. The coronavirus pandemic really put things into perspective and helped us realize the blessings we were all in. After the COVID-19 quarantine, the world is completely different. A lot of people returned to old hobbies, discovered new ones, or just caught up on all of those to-do things they had put off for ages (of which I am guilty.) Quarantine also toyed with peoples’ mental health, families growing restless with the seeming interminability of it all.
I used to think I wasn’t one of those people; that I, embodying optimistic enthusiasm, was “immune” to the negativity resulting from prolonged isolation. My eyes were opened, and I was grateful for all the things I took for granted, from going out to meeting family weekly to just being able to go anywhere I wanted. Of course, I was wrong. It took a while, but quarantine finally broke me; I had a stress breakdown – because of my personal unachieved goals, my declining health, my pressing schoolwork and extracurriculars, and my family. Everything and everyone got on my nerves, and I had had enough.
It led me to learn, however, that it’s okay to be sad, to feel overwhelmed. I don’t have to feel happy all the time, and I don’t have to be the perfect girl who handled and accepted everything thrown her way. I am imperfect, and that doesn’t make me any less of a worthy person. I also learned more about my family, their interests, and overall how genuinely nice they were. Even though it really tested me, isolation helped me find myself, organize my life, and appreciate what I have.
This pandemic also taught us to come together as people, helping each other and holding up one another when the need came. If we just paid attention with an open mind, individual liberty and privacy isn’t really that far from community health and safety. By doing our part in wearing masks and staying socially distant, we help each other slow the spread of the virus and save the health care and attention for those who really need it. Being an individual does not mean that everyone’s for themselves; it means that you expect your rights to be kept, and by doing your part you are ensuring your and other’s rights are kept.
I won’t lie and say I was okay with social distancing. I missed my family terribly and seeing them after three months felt like bliss – heaven! I would compare it to winning a million dollars, but the feeling of just being around the ones you love is incomparable to any physical entity in this world. Some of us lost dear people during the pandemic, and that only made our bonds stronger; it brought us closer together and helped me appreciate and love the people I have even more.
In the end, even though the pandemic took us to lows we’d never known before, it also brought massive highs with it. The ozone layer is healing, wildlife is healing, pollution is reduced, and Earth is fixing itself. Not just naturally, but also socially – it is more important now than ever that we realize that we’re all on this Earth, one people, one species, one body, like our Prophet (PBUH) told us.
I believe I’ll remember this pandemic and its year fondly. Obviously not because I had fun, but because I was reminded to thank Allah (SWT) for all my countless blessings, ultimately finding myself in the process after being so caught up in the daily noise of the world we live in. Even though the pandemic looked like a disaster only, it held more to it than we could have seen at first.
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