Life gives us plenty of valuable lessons if we know how to look for them. The recent lockdown is one such example.
What We’ve Learned from the Pandemic-Induced Lockdown Season
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Value the time you spend with your loved ones.
Relationships and human connections should never be taken for granted. We’ve come to realise that human contact is one of the most essential yet very underrated things in our lives. We took a lot of our relationships for granted and sacrificed time with our loved ones in pursuit of career success or personal happiness.
Under lockdown, we started looking for the company of people, especially those who we had a lot of chances to spend time with but set aside for another day just because we had other important things to do.
Now we realise that nothing is more important than our relationships. When our work was taken from us, those of us with strong interpersonal relationships had actual people to fall back on. Unfortunately, some of us learned this lesson the hard way.
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Do away with prejudices.
Never look at yourself more highly than you ought to nor look down on those you think are below you. Stop looking at people from a biased point-of-view.
We’ve all seen how many of the people we took for granted and even looked down upon became real-life, modern-day heroes to us. While most of us held doctors and medical specialists in high regard, the opposite can be said about how we looked at nurses or supermarket baggers or truck drivers and pretty much almost all the essential workforce that keep our society running.
They continue to brave the dangers of contracting the disease to ensure that we are not in lack of our needs, whether it’s medical care, essential goods, or safety.
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Live with kindness and understanding.
The coronavirus pandemic, just like fear and death, is a great equaliser among men. Not one person on this planet was not adversely affected by it. Everyone suffered from it, one way or another.
Car accident lawyers are no different from entrepreneurs because they also lost significant business and revenues. A person living in the suburbs and one in an upscale apartment in the city suffer from stress and anxiety over health and finances.
All of us have been exposed to a certain amount of pandemic-induced stress. Since we’re all going through the same thing, it’s easier for us to show empathy to others. That allows us to treat other people in the same manner that we want to be treated. Ever since the pandemic broke out, we’ve seen social media posts that show us how a little kindness and understanding goes a long way.
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Work-life balance is vital.
When the coronavirus broke out, industries temporarily shut down operations on a global scale. Those who were fortunate enough to avoid retrenchment and furloughs were sent home and allowed to work remotely. Under these new circumstances, we discovered that working from home isn’t as easy as it seems. The temptation to not get off work is genuine, in contrast with working in an office where you can leave your work once you go home.
Managing a healthy tension between work and personal time allows us to set our priorities and honour our schedules. As much as we need to stay professional, we also need to pay attention to our families and other essential aspects of our lives, including self-care.
To quote a character from an ’80s teen movie, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” The same idea applies to life lessons. If we don’t take a step back to see things from a different perspective, we stop growing and progressing, which could make us miss out on the full life we deserve.
