5 Nov 2020

In my “HLD ideas” note collection, I have heaps and heaps of one-liners I’d seen or heard relating to life lessons from Coronavirus. There appears to be no ideal way to make a whole HLD out of each line, so I’m throwing them all together in the one little bit of diarrhoea as one massive dose.

Stay focussed – let’s not don’t jump at shadows, panic buy toilet rolls, or interrogate asthmatics about why they’re coughing.

It takes something dramatic to shake you from normalcy, and our normal has changed quite a lot over the past eleven months or so. This pandemic has made us re-examine our priorities, and what we consider to be normal. This isn’t a bad thing – if our priority in life is the well being of not only our loved ones, but of EVERY one, that is not a bad priority to have in life.

Our sense of community is changing, and community is all about relationships. Relationships have tested the tyranny of physical distancing, but found other ways to survive – and thrive.

Our similarities are greater than our differences – this has become a worldwide phenomenon, and the compassion and empathy we feel for others going through varying levels of the restrictions we face, is something unheard of (to me at least) before this year.

Here for the cause, not the applause. I love this phrase, and sums up so much of the attitude displayed by people on the front line. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had this attitude to everything we do?

Values and generosity of spirit – whether it’s your own value system, or acknowledging other people’s strong values. People who don’t consider themselves strong people, are handling the situation better than others who do.

We are in this together – this phrase has been used so often it feels as if it’s been done to death…but to discard the phrase is to ignore the reality that this, in my life time, is the first time I’ve really sensed unity on this scale. We really all do understand what others are feeling. Bizarre but true.

Creating certainty – in a time when we really weren’t sure what was happening, how the virus would move through a community or country, and how the authorities would deal with it, often the only certainty we had was to keep people safe. Let’s hope we don’t forget this certainty when we are all immunised and this disease passes into the history books.

Which brings me to the last life lesson for today…

Let’s make sure we don’t leave anyone behind. Keep washing your hands, keep physical distancing, wear masks where necessary, cough into your elbows (even you asthmatics), and don’t become complacent. Let’s be able to all catch up a bit later on the other side of the pandemic.