How Corona changed me. And you.

Mallika Bhatia
4 min readSep 23, 2020

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Life as we know it has changed permanently since the past year. Nothing is the same; faces aren’t visible just like the virus, the more aren’t the merrier, and we can’t trust anything.

Sitting at a cafe yesterday, I was thinking of the precise ways the Corona pandemic has changed us as people. Here are my top ten.

  1. We have started to connect with each other’s soul.

How? you ask, because now we only focus on the eyes when we talk to someone face-to-face. Only the eyes are visible and the eyes never lie. Eyes, they say are a way to peep into someone’s soul.

Photo from unsplash

2. We have started re-prioritising, focussing only on things that are most essential.

We meet selected people, only those we really want to meet because it is too much of a risk to meet just acquaintances since we don’t know where they have been. We step out of our homes only with specific purposes at hand, strolling around the market doesn’t seem to be the best idea.

3. We are coming face-to-face with our inner demons.

Stepping out and meeting different people always gave us an outlet to be different people at different times. In the past it also helped us hide the parts that we didn’t want to show everyone. Now there seems to be very little choice in that. We are spending most of our time with the same people within the same four walls. It brings out all our insecurities. It has made us more anxious and quarrelsome so to say.

4. Our humanness has also come up to the surface.

We are willing to help each other. We are willing to rescue those who are stuck. We have somewhat re-started to connect and work as a community. At some level we realise that we are all interconnected. We are all one.

Photo from unsplash

5. Our privileges are becoming more obvious with each passing day.

How are we privileged? When we think of migrants walking hundreds of kilometers in India, just to find the safety of home, when we think of the health care facilities that we can afford but a lot of people can’t, when we can decide to sit in front of our screens and earn a living and others have to go out there and face dangers everyday, when we still get salaries into our accounts, when we can make sure that our loved ones remain safe… with each of these when’s we become more and more privileged.

6. The virus has made us humbler and more egotistical at the same time.

We realise how powerless we are that something so tiny and invisible can control and change our entire life and yet we buy diamond studded masks to keep the virus at bay.

7. The value of money had increased and decreased in the same breath.

Money can’t guarantee health and recovery, if we get infected by the virus but the same money that can ensure we do get proper treatment and nutrition.

8. It has increased the number of times we hear about someone we know dying.

It is taking too many souls with it. Spiritually speaking it is almost like mass ascension but it is not. The family doesn’t get to meet the person who went, there is no final goodbye, no closure for the people left behind.

9. We are more unsure than ever.

We can’t be sure of our plans, we can’t be sure of the things we touch or the people we meet. We are unsure of our future as a race. We don’t know if life will ever be normal again. We aren’t even sure of how to define normal anymore.

Photo from Unsplash

10.Our homes have become our havens and prisons as at the same time.

They are our yoga studio, our therapy room, our office, our ballet floor, our stage, everything.

Our home keeps us safe now but I am not sure it is keeping us sane.

You have an 11th and a 12th?? Please add in the comment section below..

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Mallika Bhatia
Mallika Bhatia

Written by Mallika Bhatia

Psychotherapist-Writer-Life coach. Currently based in Munich, Germany, where she lives with her partner & 2 gorgeous children. She was born and raised in India.

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