After The Pandemic

We're all hankering to gain back what we may have lost to Covid-19, but do we really want to go back to the way we were?

- AA Patawaran

I hope this quarantine will last forever, says no one, even as everyone has found a way to deal with it.

Not that we have any choice. All this time in our hands compels us to pull ourselves together because we can only stare at the walls in shock for so long. So we’ve learned to cope. Out of our long-drawn-out quarantine hours, we are now doing Work from Home (WFH) shifts, online lessons, TikTok gym hacks, IG TV cooking tutorials, even Zoom parties. We’ve learned to use the time to declutter our spaces and Facebook friends list, grow vegetables or our beards, discover gems on Netflix,on Spotify, in our bookshelves, in our memories, and renew or renounce our ties with the peoplein our lives. Better yet, we may have found a way to help, raising funds or awareness, DIY-ing masks or PPEs, cooking up a storm of food donations.

But then this pandemic, too, shall pass.

And when it does, no matter how resolved we are now to seize this opportunity to start afresh, we will be moved to go back to our old ways, to bring things back to how they used to be.

But do we really want to go back to the way we were before this abrupt pause, during which, at the very least, we have learned we can drop almost everything, including tomorrow’s all-too-important meeting? Some things can wait. And many of them we don’t really need.

Based on the epiphanies we have shared on our social feeds as soon as we realized that the pandemic—temporary as it ought to be or else what?—has upended our lives, here is a list of some of those things we can maybe do away with in this changed world.

1. TRAFFIC