Has Coronavirus Brought Us Closer?

I don’t know about you, but I feel the Coronavirus outbreak has brought families and loved ones closer. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t mean the pandemic is a good thing. I just mean that if there was even a single silver lining to be seen in all this misery, it is that we are learning to appreciate our relationships and our lives a bit more. It could be a case of social distance making the heart grow fonder. 

As people work from home, they are seeing firsthand how the house is being run. In the absence of domestic help, they are investing their own time in household chores. They are cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, mopping, looking after their kids and lots more, morning, noon and night. And in the process, breaking away from the auto-pilot lives they were living and developing a more intense connections with the home and family. 

On the flip side, it’s also a time for heightened anxiety for loved ones. As the lockdown eases and the numbers continue to rise, there is a sense of foreboding of the disease coming closer. The only way you can get a sense of control is to try and be prepared, armed with information on which hospital, which doctor to be in touch with, what to do in case of an infection, how to make sure it doesn’t reach the hospitalisation stage. But most importantly, how to stay fit and keep immunity levels of everyone in the family up so that they can fight the virus. 

Looking beyond home, we are all missing our friends. Our social lives had been revolving around work. Now with work-from-home becoming the now, that outlet is also out. We haven’t met even our closest friends in the longest time. In fact, there was a time in between when I couldn’t even meet my daughter and granddaughter who live less than two kilometres away. We still haven’t gone out anywhere. On the other hand, though, we came in touch with several of our friends who we hadn’t spoken to in ages. We’ve having regular video chats with them now. We are checking in with people more often. Every conversation starts with “I hope you are healthy, I hope you are safe.” Earlier when we could physically see people, say, walking around in office, we would assume they are okay. We wouldn’t stop and ask “I hope you are healthy.”

The fact is, home and the loved ones were what and who we took most for granted. And these have been disrupted the most by the pandemic. I hope even when things open up and we go back to some sort of normal life, we continue to value and pay attention to our relationships and lives again. Till then, I hope you are healthy. I hope you are safe.