Happy Realization

Life is weird. The things we never expect, just happen in a snap of a finger. You wake up in the morning and find yourself in a totally different world. It's like you have traveled to some other dimension of this universe. Conditions that are prevailing around the world have helped me to gain some perspective towards life. It gave me a break from fast-moving life to think, to observe, and to find the satire and irony that surrounds us.  

 

Nowadays, we all are living in a parallel dimension of this world, where other organisms are free and moving around like Kings and Queens while we humans are caged inside. When I listen to the chirping of birds, barking of dogs outside, it feels as if they are expressing their happiness and gratitude towards  Mother Earth for locking her spoilt brat child inside the cage.  Even Mother Earth is also enjoying our lockdown, as she is getting time to clean herself, rejuvenate herself and give herself some time to move closer to her original state.

 

The interesting thing is that what COVID-19 has done in just 2-3 months, many organizations like UNDP,   UNFCCC, WHO, etc. were not able to do after putting in years of efforts to reduce pollution, clean the air circulation, etc. On the other hand, it feels bad, it feels like our cities have lost the essence of liveliness, it feels like the world has lost the spark when we look at the empty and silent surroundings.

 

This lockdown made me realize the importance of smaller things about which I did not even care. I have started to avoid wastage of food, inculcated certain habits that I would never even bother to ponder on. Now our conversations have also taken a different direction from achieving our dreams to cooking food, from attaining high-end goals to maintaining the household supply, from accumulating wealth to accumulating freedom. Sometimes it feels like I am living in a movie where this invisible monster has engulfed the whole city and everyone is walking like a zombie wearing mask and we all are living as if every day is our last.

 

But above all, it made me realize that nature knows its way out, it knows when and how to get back at us. It keeps on hinting at us, through different means like storms, earthquakes, floods, etc. to stop exploiting her, to stop over-utilizing its resources.  So now what?  Even though there is clean air in the sky, we can't enjoy it. The sky is filled with beautiful stars but we can't see them. We can’t even move freely around but let's all take note of happy realization that we have made through this experience -  that nothing, no experience, and no person, including Mother Earth, should be taken for granted.

Shreya Chaturvedi