I don't think any of us could have anticipated that we would be where we are now. A year ago, or even months ago, nobody would have thought it possible for a modern society like ours to be hit by a pandemic on a level that seemed to exist only in the long-gone past and in movies. Panic buying. Toilet paper hoarding. Convenience stores no longer open 24/7. People ordering hair clippers online to cut their own hair. Face masks becoming a necessary entry pass for most public venues. They're now normal. A new normal, so to speak. Life has surely changed a lot.
What a difference a few months can make, and if we are to look in another direction, how much more will change? How will these events affect us as individuals and as a society in the future? Once the pandemic is handled and the situation returns back to, well, normal -- if that word will still apply -- what will be our new normal? And what are the things from the past -- our "old" normal -- that will never go away?
Will our habits of today remain? Will we still wash our hands at every opportunity? Will we try to disinfect everything we touch? Will we wear face masks more if we're sick? Will we incorporate more work-at-home days? Will we migrate faster into the online, digital world? Food. Shopping. Meetings. Interviews. For these activities, we now opt to use online applications instead of seeing each other face-to-face or be somewhere in person. Life has gone virtual at an incredible pace. Once the virus is under control, will all these things subside?
Just earlier this year, all anyone could talk about was zero-waste. Now, with additional demand for food delivery and online shopping, the initiative has been put aside to make way for something more immediately life-threatening. Sightings of dolphins in the Venetian canal, turtles laying eggs on the beach, and reduced pollution has many jumping for joy without realising the amount of waste being built up at the moment from all the single-use supplies needed to fight this virus. Some may feel the pandemic and subsequent lockdown are yielding something beneficial to nature and the world, but are they? Were all the lives that have been taken and put to risk a good justification? I don't think so.
Still, this seemingly recovering nature does give us something to ponder. The virus is keeping us inside our homes, prohibiting us from physically and directly disrupting the environment (while still indirectly affecting it with all the trash). And when the lockdown is lifted, will we just revert to the way we once were now that we have seen a possibility of what our nature and air quality could be with less interference from us? Are we realising that? The minute lockdown is lifted, we'll break out of our own home, head out to the wild to satisfy that craving for travel and party like never before. The beach. The mountain. The forest. The joy we once felt. The pictures and videos of dolphins we once "liked" on social media -- will we still remember them once this is over? And then, will we do something about it in order to maintain that sort of natural state somehow?
The pandemic has sure put in perspective what really matters in life. We've given up a lot of things momentarily, and life went back to the essential -- good health, the most basic necessity of all. Will we value nurses and doctors more? I'd say the general public has already realised this, but has the government reached the same conclusion? Will they realise the importance of the healthcare sector and pay more attention and allocate more funding to it? Or will celebrities have to do cross-country runs again to raise funds for hospitals? Judging from how many hospitals are barely scraping by, with a lack of equipment and protective gear -- and with many relying on public donations for these necessities -- the outlook doesn't seem so positive.
Being hit by the once-in-a-century pandemic has sure brought a lot of questions, and I wonder if we'll discover the answers to them soon. I'd like to think we're learning something from it. Are we, though? Will we emerge from it the same people we once were or will this serve as a good shake-up -- a wake-up call -- for each of us in every sector, to consider the path we've walked and the direction we'll take from now on? Will we come out of it new people? Will we ever be the same? Or will we move on and walk away as if this never even happened?
Melalin Mahavongtrakul is a feature writer for the Life section of the Bangkok Post.