World-Weary Words of Hope

I dined out last night alone at the Chinese coffee shop and was surprised that the place was quite empty. The volume of night activities has more than halved and it was pleasant to be able to find parking when in pre-pandemic days, it would have been difficult to even drive through the area.

This is the one good thing that the pandemic brought about. Chinese coffee shops are now much more comfortable places because they are forced to space out their tables and limit the number of patrons. Usually these places are jam-packed with customers and it was never easy to get a place to sit, especially for lone diners like yours truly. The pandemic has ironically made dining out a better experience for people like me, who usually eat alone and linger after my meal to read and drink.

I enjoy drinking beer at the Chinese coffee shop because they are the cheapest places to do so. During my days in Singapore, I used to have beer and stout at the food court near my place and spent time there reading quietly.  Prior to the pandemic, I used to eat alone at a cafe and spent time working on my project after that. 

For better or worse,  the pandemic has certainly brought changes to our lifestyles. We got used to ordering food and eating from home. Many companies found that they could be equally productive having their employees work from home. Some people, by choice or by necessity, decided to switch careers, having rediscovered hobbies or skills which they could make a living on. Wildlife and the environment also had a respite from the intrusion of humans and the pollution caused by their activities.

The pandemic is a good opportunity to re-engineer our lives for the better. The world used to be a quieter and more livable place but we've sacrificed a lot of that in our chase for material prosperity.

The roadsides at my neighbourhood are filled with cars parked indiscriminately. Every house has at least 2 cars. It's difficult even to go anyway on foot as pedestrians have no safe space to walk. All our spare time is consumed by online content. Everyone's attention is glued to some kind of screen.

Is this a better world? Yes and no. On the one hand, we have more accessible knowledge online than we ever had before. But we also had the entire filth of the world available at the click of the mouse. All kids live within a screen-tap away from the worst neighbourhoods in the world.  That's the kind of world we live in now and we have to manage it wisely.

Our roads used to be safe places for cyclists and pedestrians. But now, they are choked with cars and fumes. But we take comfort in the fact that we could also drive in this gridlocked traffic in air-conditioned comfort, plugged into our favourite content, streamed into our car dashboards or headphones.

But as always, I'll count the blessings that we have: we live in a peaceful era and are blessed with an abundance of food. We have the freedom to pursue our goals and are given the opportunity to realize the meaningful life, as we define it. 

There will be moments of world weariness like this but at least I get to blog about it. Having done so, I am grateful and hopeful that the world will self-correct itself and pave the way to a better future for everyone.