I woke up this morning feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and defeated to be honest. It is day 20 of the lockdown, day 21 was meant to be our last but our isolation misery has been extended by 14 days. I Imagine I am not the only one feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and defeated about what the future holds for us, because as we stare into the future, it looks rather bleak at the moment. Businesses are struggling to stay afloat much less pay salaries/wages, I myself would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about the survival of my business and the livelihoods of myself, my family, business partners, employees and 3rd party suppliers – just thinking about how far the net stretches gives me a headache. Students, parents, and learning institutions are facing enormous burdens like lack of critical resources such as wifi/data, laptops/PC, electricity etc to keep the education curriculum moving for all students across the country. Hospitals/clinics are inundated with Covid19 patients in addition to the non-Covid19 patients and are quickly running out of medical resources necessary to save lives and prevent further spread of the virus. People in poverty-stricken communities who are mainly day and service labourers meaning they don’t have the luxury of working remotely and basically live hand to mouth, are more concerned about dying from hunger than from Covid19. One major positive to all of this is the exemplary way the government has reacted to what I am sure we can all agree is an unprecedentedly impossible situation because “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. Nobody knows what the future looks like, but one thing is for certain, Covid19 has changed the way we live, learn, conduct business, and coexist for the foreseeable future, if not forever.
All things said and done an eternal truth is that times of struggle build character – struggle is temporary but strong character is everlasting. The stronger your character, the stronger your roots, the harder it is to blow you away. A strong character will keep you grounded and help you weather any storm you come across. The struggles we are facing remind us to walk by faith and not by sight – that despite how bleak, foggy and uncertain the future may look, we must walk courageously into that foggy and uncertain future with an unwavering belief that this too shall pass and that when it does we will all be better people for having gone through it. We will be people of good courage and strong character. And this is what I was reminded of this morning as I was getting ready for the day, as I could feel myself getting increasingly overwhelmed, anxious, and defeated – struggle is temporary but good courage and strong character is everlasting. Thus, regardless of whatever way Covid19 has affected you (mentally, physically, financially, emotionally etc) I urge you to allow the journey to build strong character within you and courageously walk into the unknown future.