Is our world falling apart? Some thoughts

Last night, my brother casually mentioned that Ramadhan would begin in around twenty days or so. If you keep track of the Islamic calendar, this might not come as big news, but being oblivious to changes in dates and months, I was shocked. I had been aware that Ramadhan would, this year, begin at the end of April, but it still seemed to be a while away. Until I realized that it was April already, and the holy month was just around the corner. 

It wasn’t the fact that Ramadhan was coming that shocked me. It was the fact that so much time had elapsed which we hadn’t kept track of at all. Right now, twenty days have passed since I last left the house, and not much has happened since. 

In a normal routine, twenty days mean a lot. They can be enough to complete a couple of chapters of studying and get a lot of work done. When travelling, twenty days allow for a luxurious tour. When you start a new sport, twenty days are enough to get in the flow. 

And here, twenty days had passed and I had done nothing productive that I could account myself for. Of course I’m not counting the little, everyday things that we all do. What I mean is: I had not spent any time working towards a bigger goal that I had. Not that there were no big goals to work for - there were quite a lot of things that I could have worked on and completed during this time. The thing is, I did not want to do any of those things. And that is different from not being able to do them, for I had all the time and resources at my disposal to do those things. 

I think this is one thing that this pandemic is doing to a lot of us. We’ve lost the motivation and energy to do the work that we used to be so eager to do. What is the point, after all, of working for a future that is bleak, at best? 

I’m in my second year of A levels, and I stopped studying the day I found out that our exams had been cancelled, because I saw no point in studying any longer. And I am one of those students who take studying a bit too seriously. A week before the announcement, I had studied the exams schedule and found that there were nine weeks left until the exams began. I had taken out all my textbooks and divided up my remaining work week-wise. Then, I made a plan for the first two weeks, dividing the week’s work into slots for each day. All this planning had taken a couple of hours, but I didn’t mind that, for I believed that time spent planning wasn’t time wasted. The day I got the update that the exams had been cancelled, I cried. 

It would be a lie to say that we know what we’re doing, where we want to be ten years from now, and what we want to end up doing. We don’t. For most of the time, we don’t know what we’re doing or where we’re going - it’s like we’ve been pushed into a river and we’re just going along with the flow. We are a product of our circumstances. But we are not blind. We can see where the flow is taking us, and we’re okay with it. Or at least, we were okay with it. Until we realized that we couldn’t see it anymore. Until a hazy mist appeared, blocking the rest of the river from view, making us realize that while we are still going somewhere, we have no idea where it is. Will we end up at a scenic garden or a deadend - we do not know. 

That realization, I think, is what is killing us. Each day we see news of more cases and more deaths, and then updates of the lockdown being extended, and we find ourselves more and more helpless. Being pushed into a river is not the best experience, but when you are blindfolded, it gets so much worse. 

I really do not mean to be excessively pessimistic, and if this post is making you lose hope further, I’m genuinely sorry about it. But the thing is, I think it’s wrong to be excessively optimistic in such circumstances either. We need to acknowledge the fact that the world is changing in unprecedented ways, and we aren’t adequately prepared for that change. And before you start thinking that I’m an overly anxious or depressed person, I’m really not. I do agree with the perspective that we need to put our trust in God, and leave everything to Him instead of fretting. But it is also, I believe, justified to be concerned about the foreseeable future, and make our plans for it.