Have we lost all the lessons we learned in lockdown?

It’s now three years since we were all attempting to get used to being forced to stay indoors, while many of us also juggled the madness of homeschooling along with keeping fit with Joe Wicks.

I am still jumpy at the mere mention of the words ‘online and learning’ but the frustrations of those seemingly endless, tedious days are steadily becoming a distant memory, one that no longer dominates every single discussion with everybody we know, like it once did.

It wasn’t that long ago since many of us thought we would be wearing face masks for years to come, but these days, it’s difficult not to do a double take on the increasingly rare occasion that you see somebody wearing them in public.

The fact that some still feel the need to cover their faces when they leave their homes should serve as a reminder that not everybody now feels safe, which is understandable when you consider how many people we all know are still catching Covid. There are some who think latter day mask wearers need to have a word with themselves and get on with it like the rest of us have.

Sadly, that view is further evidence that we have slipped back into old, bad habits and have forgotten the lessons of the pandemic, among which was being kind to each other. There was a hope that the wartime spirit of 2020 would stick around for much longer than it did, but we’ve all taken to ignoring strangers again. If we can help it.

Just three years ago, we genuinely wondered whether life would ever get back to normal and I know that I was not on my own in promising myself that I wouldn’t take those freedoms for granted if I was ever to get them back. I’m guilty of impatience towards strangers who dawdle on the stairs of train stations, usually because I’m in a hurry.

Three years ago, we weren’t in a rush to get anywhere and that prolonged period of being cooped up watching boxsets made millions of us much more reflective, something which promised to herald a new dawn of kindness and tolerance in this country.

If you’d told me three years ago that I would be planning foreign holidays, sitting in packed theatres and cinemas and eating out whenever I can afford it, I would’ve been sceptical, given the very many challenges that we faced at the time.

It begs the question why we are not nearly enough grateful for the very many freedoms that we now have again.