Altered reality
Enough of the baking and cooking and exercising and bingeing on food and movies and Koreanovelas – it is time to face the next normal.
If you had any doubts at all that a tiny microorganism had disrupted our lives, consider the things you did “Before COVID (BC).”
You never washed your hands as often as you do now, wore a mask wherever you went (even if it’s just to open the door to a food delivery person) or stayed home as long as you have from mid-March to present day.
Weeks BC, you never thought you would miss your hairstylist or dentist; popping in for a coffee at your favorite chain; and amusing yourself with a new top at a store you happened to pass by on your way to lunch.
The last time you bought beauty supplies or made a waxing appointment feels like another lifetime. Holding cash did not use to terrify you with images of crawling germs, and deciding to “go out” was a choice you still had.
Movies? Netflix, iFlix, or whatever flicks-laden streaming site you may be using, is just not the same as the giant screen where you could escape in the dim confines of a cinema, popcorn in hand.
What you may be missing most, like me, is hugging your parents who, being senior citizens, now have to stay a good social distance away from everyone. Or maybe it is your children or friends you have been longing to see. Who knew that standing close to one another had been something we took for granted that we barely noticed it until now when we have to stay at least a meter apart?
Did we ever imagine that one day, there would be none of that bar crawl in Poblacion, Makati, or that the huge party you were planning for your big milestone would never come to pass? Those trips to Bali, Boracay and the Maldives will just have to wait – or we can content ourselves with virtual tours, now the hottest rage among culture vultures and travel enthusiasts.
During the first few weeks of quarantines or lockdowns that governments across the world saw fit to impose to control the spread of the novel coronavirus, people managed to see silver linings in the cataclysmic scenario.
At the back of everyone’s minds, it would all come to an end -- sooner or later.
But sooner gave way to later (and perhaps maybe never). We began to realize that accepting a different way to live, as novel as the virus that reshaped our existence, must be next on the agenda.
Enough of the baking and cooking and exercising and bingeing on food and movies and Koreanovelas – it is time to face the next normal.
This is what we hope to lay out before you with this issue – a look at our life now, some 20 years into our life as a newspaper, and forever and day into our life as human beings. The world as we knew it is gone. While there is sadness and perhaps some regret, we can assure ourselves knowing that somehow we will weather this one, too. Because even through a pandemic as widespread as that caused by COVID-19, one thing will not change: our Filipino spirit!
What you may be missing most, like me, is hugging your parents who, being senior citizens, now have to stay a good social distance away from everyone.