Readers Write In #780: What The Five?

By abishekspeare

March 25 will mark five years since the lockdown. FIVE!

I was a carefree college student, whose biggest concern was if I’ll like my lunch today. Tbh it still is, but –

They announced holidays. Sorry, lockdown. Then I stayed home attending online classes, started sanitizing every single thing that caught my eye, lost weight, gained weight, tonsured my hair because of COVID paranoia, binge-watched stuff like a night owl.

And then I got an internship, and I started making money. What do you mean, I can now order food on my own? I can book tickets to places and travel if I feel like it?

And then I completed college. I got a job where I was facing clients, publishing outputs that were read by people whose work experience was my age. Being part of teams that impact things in real life, outside of the campus.

And then I got married, moved out, starting managing a household, started planning what groceries to buy for this week and paid the electricity bill.

Cut to today: I’ve moved between three houses, two jobs, and one city. There are parts of me that have unrecognisably changed. There are parts of me that are still the same. I still get dreams of not going to an exam prepared. But I wake up realising that the exam I am writing these days are completely different.

What I’m trying to say is: We keep planning out things in our life. But who knows what will happen and where you will be in 5 years!

Some days I think of that guy who just had a soup or something in China. Thank you, random Chinese guy, for defining my life for five years and mostly making it better.