Shouldn’t we be grateful to the COVID-19 pandemic which has taught us about ourselves and the meaning and purpose of life? The Corona virus has told us about ourselves, our country, culture, society, religion and government, and what can we expect from a post-COVID world. How many surreal events have unfolded around us since COVID-19 broke out! How life has unfolded in a pandemic!
French philosopher Albert Camus had observed the literal meaning of life as “whatever you are doing that prevents you from killing yourself.” Or, the purpose of life is to do things that keep us from dying. Is this different from what we have been doing to keep COVID-19 at bay?
Over the past few months our primary aim has been to stay alive, do things that keep us from killing ourselves. The pursuit of survival got predominance over the pursuit of happiness, the quest for knowledge or recognition, or philanthropy.
The indispensability to interact with the world has necessitated fundamental changes in social behavior, minus hypocrisies. Now simple acts, like going out in public without a mask, taking a walk in the park, touching a door, could be a death sentence.
The pandemic has turned not just philosophy on its head; it has done the same with history. For thousands of years, the march of humanity was towards what we called organized society. The cave dwellers started living in groups; then they organized themselves as agricultural societies; the agriculturists evolved into industrial cities; and the industrial towns and cities merged into a global economy. This millions of years of evolutionary process has been set back to its starting point by a mere virus in a span of days — like the first cave dwellers, we are now on our own; the society, as we knew it, has ceased to exist.
Corona has revealed that the fight for survival can make us easily lock ourselves up from the world, both physically and emotionally, turn ourselves into not just the centre of the universe, but the universe itself. When each person is on their own, it leads to a pandemic of selfishness. It is a trait that’s engraved deep on our psyche because of the fundamental law of the universe — survival of the fittest.
All said, will humans always live in fear? If we look around, we can see the fear of the virus slowly receding, even if the disease itself is raging.
One thing is certain. We should send Corona virus a bouquet of flowers of gratitude for giving us many insights and teaching us precious lessons.
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