There is no traffic, no congestion. Busy streets are now closed. Restaurants and malls are now empty. Life is on a standstill. Parks and playgrounds are devoid of children’s laughter. The sea is alone, with no one to visit it. It looks like an apocalypse. A scene out of a movie.

Never before have we seen the streets of our city so empty and lifeless. This is the first time we have collectively experienced a pandemic. What is happening with you is happening with every single person out there. We are all in this together.

Many students have to take a gap year now. They have got to put their college and university dreams on hold to hide from this virus. People who have jobs are uncertain whether they will be able to continue or will be downsized. Business owners are worried because their incomes have stopped.

The wheel of the world has come to a halt. This virus is pushing at the wheel, hoping to break it, looking to crash our economies, but on the other side is the resistance – by the people, governments and all of us. We are holding the world, supporting it, by staying in our homes, by keeping a distance and by taking precautions.

It is not at all easy to be confined inside our homes. We all ache to go out, meet our friends and cousins. We all want to go to eat our favourite ice cream and our favourite burgers. We want to play all the games we love to play. But we cannot; for our safety and for the safety of the world.

Let’s face it, we are going to be living like this for a while. We cannot really do anything about it. What we can do is look at this in the positive light. This is a great opportunity in disguise for us. We have been given the gift of time. Schools are off, classes are over, we do not have any distractions. We can use this time to be productive. We can hone our skills, learn new things and think about what we want to do in the future.

We can make art, write stories, play music, catch up with our friends and watch all the movies we had been wanting to watch, but could not because of all the assignments. Or, we can just focus on taking this time to relax and reboot our systems. We can ponder over our shortcomings and our mistakes and find ways to make ourselves better and improve our personalities.

This is a beautiful time to do all this stuff so when we come out of this mess, we come out as better people, better humans. People who will take care of each other and take care of our surroundings; people who have learned something necessary.

We will come out strong, both in our mind and body. We will have a new purpose, a new way of seeing things. Like a man who had lost the sense of seeing things for a while, but he has been given his sight back now, hence he sees things in a new light.

That is what we should aim for instead of trying to break the safety rules and complaining. It is hard, but it is important. It is vital that we go through this as one; together. Whining and complaining will not solve things, moving forward will.

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 20th, 2020