WHAT LESSONS CAN WE LEARN FROM COVID-19?

Empathy. What is Empathy?

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feeling of another individual.

We live in a world and generation of selfishness and instant gratification, even when it comes to human interactions. We are quick to get angry and blame rather than understand and empathize. We are concerned about our own needs and desires without being aware or even considerate of how our actions and words affects others. Researchers suggest it takes roughly between 5-7 seconds for us to judge someone. These judgements are more than often based off superficial things like the way a person looks, dresses, the color of their skin-tone, social status, their body-image and the list can go on. But what has this COVID-19 pushed the world to do? It has forced us to suspend our judgement and look to one another as brothers and sisters of one race, this is a global pandemic affecting each single one of us- directly or indirectly. People are losing loved ones unexpectedly left and right, we do not know what the person we cross paths with is going through in their lives or what struggles they are fighting. Keeping this in mind highlights the necessity to be more mindful and kinder to one another.

Covid-19 is putting the human back in humanity, as a wake-up call to the world to WAKE UP and fight for recovery through collectively coming together and doing our due diligence as our moral obligation and responsibility. The essential workers the world has once sneered or judged are now the nation’s leading heroes as they are the prime reason the rest of us get to comfortably receive the materials we so comfortably order from the luxury of our homes. What has Quarantine made us realize? What can we gain from social distancing? Covid-19 has taught us to not only be mindful but to be kinder with one another but to value our loved ones and the time we have with them and be mindful of the way we treat those we interact with. With the world shutting down, quarantine forces humans to confront perhaps that which they may have been avoiding for a long time. Filling our lives with screen-time, social media, and nonstop routines has caused us to forget the simple things of life such as just being, breathing and having a roof over our heads and nurturing current bonds,  importance of valuing one another and the conversations necessary to uncover and heal from built-up resentment tearing people apart causing us to fill our lives with everything else to serve as distractions to avoid focusing on that which matters most, the relationships we may have neglected but can be nurtured during this time.

Quarantine forces us as human beings to confront that which we may have been avoiding because it is only through confronting truths, realities and having those difficult conversations to bring about peace, connection and prosperity through understanding and empathy.

That which we avoid only rises to the surface in subconscious and in unhealthy ways. Let’s be more grateful, mindful and thankful. Perhaps the world will come out of this pandemic stronger than ever by valuing and nurturing our current bonds, striving for self-improvement, being more mindful and truly adopting a gratitude mindset and being kinder with one another.