I realize that I have so much time at hand by not doing the activities that I always wanted to avoid. Like those long commutes. Or needless trips to shopping malls. Or attending those guests that I didn’t want to.
So much time at hand. So much that I could do, that I could create potentially. Potentially.
However, I find that my mind wanders off. It can’t concentrate for long. It can’t be creative. I keep staring at the blank screen before I give up and reach out for something to read. I stare at those words that should mean something. But then I again give up. Finally and unwillingly, I land at those apps. The apps that I had carefully spent the last few months on getting into a habit of avoiding.
Wish this wasn’t difficult. But the fact is today everything is. Wish I could better control my mind. But the fact is today I can hardly control anything.
When this all passes over, it is not this helplessness that I want to remember these days for. So it is my photo gallery that is most happening.
It is full of snapshots of everything different that we have been doing together as a family. Cooking. Playing. Singing. Dancing. Not just the photos, it is full of videos now. I am creating movies out of these moments of togetherness. At least, am learning now. The pictures, the movies, they need not be perfect, as long as they bring out the underlying, momentary happiness, hopefulness, that I lived through.
So some years down, when I get a notification for new memories in my photos app — saying “5 years ago” — it is that feeling of togetherness, happiness, hopefulness that I want to personally associate this pandemic, this lockdown with.
Maybe that’s very selfish of me. But that’s the least harmful vice this pandemic could live behind within me.