Lockdown Part- 3 (Last)

Mehfil

Here is the third and last part of our talk show. Hope you will like and appreciate our participants' views. I am sharing also written answer to my questions of a friend from the USA, Nadia Ahsan. 3. What did I learn from the pandemic and lockdown? Definitely thanking Allah for all His blessings. You learn to appreciate all His blessings even more. You learn to be thankful to Allah for health, for family, for the stability of job in these difficult times. I was also thank full that we had the internet which allowed us to stay in touch with the outside world and with our family members in other parts of the world. Imagine this all happening in times when there was no internet; that would be the real isolation. That would be even more difficult to survive. During the lockdown, life slowed down, and I noticed everyone enjoying things we hadn’t in a very long time such as going for walks, spending time with family, eating dinners together, movie nights at home, playing board games. Basically, life slowed down. What I enjoyed most was Ramadhan. Living in a non-Muslim country, the routine did not change in Ramadan. It was always a lot of running around taking care of errands, kids schools and studies, going to work..all while fasting. But this year, I was able to enjoy Ramadhan properly. It was peaceful and had time for more Ibadah. After a long time, I felt like I enjoyed the real essence of Ramadan. The negatives were obvious… the number of people getting sick and dying, a lot of people without work, long lines at grocery stores and several items out of stock everywhere, not being able to socialize much especially on Eid. 4. I think, after the lockdown, life will eventually go back to normal. It may take some time but it will. People forget and life goes back to business as usual. We have had such pandemics in the past such as the 1918 flu pandemic and eventually, life resumed when the virus was over. We have had wars where whole cities were destroyed but people recovered. In my opinion, the same is going to happen now. An example, the protests happening in the US related to the death of George Floyd had already diverted people's attention from Covid-19. There are other states who have completely opened up and although they have active COVID cases, people are starting to return to their usual routines. I guess a lot do not have any other choice. One thing that may change is that you might see some workplaces consider the option of work from home for its employees. A lot of tech companies are already thinking of shifting to this model. For example, Twitter has announced that its employees will be working from home indefinitely. Other companies will definitely follow suit.