Quarantine Reflections
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Hope Amidst a Pandemic By Ella Shaina Solima
n March 2020, the world completely changed because of the virus known as COVID-19. Since the previous months we have been wearing masks, staying in our houses, and have been practicing social distancing. It hasn’t been easy for everyone. I was Grade 4 at the time, and everything had been going fine until that afternoon, the school announced that classes would not be held the next day. At first, I was really happy because I did not need to wake up early. Then online school took place. The teachers posted tasks on our Facebook group, online school then ended in May. Eventually, our online school still resumed in August even though a lot of people talked about academic freeze. I was feeling excited because I could see my classmates again. During the vacation when online classes ended, I was not easily bored because I got to spend time with my family. We played board games, and we also played outside in our garden. We also walked our dogs regularly. We spent the majority of the quarantine baking. We baked everything from breads to cakes and pastries. We even opened a home-based business which is going very strong. We also had movie nights often. It was through experiences and moments like these, as well as, through constant prayer that kept me hopeful that things would turn out okay, that we would stay safe, and that this pandemic would end. For me, quarantine was one of the toughest moments of my life. I couldn’t go anywhere. But then I learned that it wasn’t so bad. I got to spend time with my family and I also got to know them more. And despite all of the awful and discouraging headlines daily, in the future when I grow old, I will surely remember everything differently. I found hope amidst the pandemic by always remembering to stay positive in hope that God will soon put an end to all this and bring a smile back to our faces.
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Realizations in this Pandemic
By Lorraine E. Co n this newlywed pandemic, I had seen and heard a lot of unhappy and devastating news, from COVID-19 cases growing into massive numbers, from innocent people dying because of a deadly disease, from millions of people losing their jobs because of this pandemic. We have realizations, refIections, and doubts. And in that realization, we learned to be thankful, thousands of frontliners sacrificed their lives and time, to care and save people who had been infected by the virus, they work countless hours to save lives, even though how they wish they could go and visit their families for a short time, they can’t. And in this realization, we realize to be thankful, we need to look back and see the sacrifices of our generous and hardworking frontliners, we need to shout “ThankYou,Heroes!”And when we realize this,we also think of something, we think of the word “Help”. We help these frontliners by following COVID-19 protocols, you might be thinking it’s a small action and it won’t help, but there was a saying, “A small helpful action will change the whole world”.
And what I’m trying to tell and convince you is start helping, it may be small, but helping is a good choice to choose than doing nothing and ignoring all of the things that are happening. Amidst of this pandemic, we must try and help in our own small ways too. And we refIect that we’re not too grateful of what we have, we always think that we have less and we need something bigger, but then we refIect. Other people lost their jobs and sometimes goes home feeling hungry, while you never felt that; other people who are less fortunate that they have to live in the streets and the devastating part, is that there’s a virus and they have to worry about and they don’t even get a chance to sleep in a bed, while we have a comfy bed and a place we call home, with no worries. What we realize and refIect on this, is that we have to be grateful no matter what, things we think that are less are things other people think that are enough and wish they had that too, so we always have to be grateful and put ourselves on other people’s shoes. And remember it’s okay if you don’t have what other people have you just have to be grateful. And in these times, we have to be patient and understanding. We have to understand that sometimes our parents can’t give us other things, in this pandemic our loving parents work hard to earn money just to give us opportunities and better education. We sometimes envy things and want it right away but we can’t have everything so we have to be patient. Who knows, our parents might be suffering from financial issues and they’re trying to balance their savings. We have to be patient and understanding, we have to understand that we can’t own everything in this world and we can only own a few things, and we need to be sensible in this world to at least help our parents through this newlywed pandemic, and to fight together to survive all this mess and to hope for a better life and to stop this pandemic. Hence, in these trying times we can survive if we grow into a helping manner together as one faithful community for all of the people in our country and for all the people of this earth. We have to be strong and faithful for this pandemic to end and may we pray for all those who have been affected by the COVID-19 and to all front liners who work hard everyday to give people one more day to live. We think, pray, and hope for the gleeful day to come. Amidst these trying times, we must hope for the better.
Layout By Kenn Zyndryx Y. Subrado
Vol. 38 No. 1 August 2020 - December 2020
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