Simone Reddington

As the COVID-19 lockdown starts to ease in Britain, and more people are going back to work and socialising with people outside of their households, it feels as though normal life is resuming again. We can go to the pub, send our children to school, get our hair cut and even book summer holidays to Spain again. Although I am still on furlough for the foreseeable future and still don’t feel comfortable mixing with other people, as I live with older parents; I don’t begrudge anyone enjoying the freedom to enjoy time with their loved ones again.

As I look for other jobs and make plans for the future, I can’t help but wonder what the effect that this pandemic will have on the world and human society. I feel that is very naive to claim that coronavirus will make us all ‘better people.’ The human race is made up of both good and evil people, it always has been and it always will be. Throughout history mankind has seen wars, famines, pandemics, genocide and all sorts of other natural disasters and we have still gone on to have saints, sinners and everything in between. For every person who has gone out of their way to help somebody else over the last couple of months or raised money for our brilliant NHS, there have been others who have hoarded all the supplies in the supermarket or selfishly disobeyed the social distancing rules and risked spreading the deadly virus. However, we can reflect on our lives and think of ways that we can use our experiences over lock-down to improve ourselves and the world around us. Over the last 4 months of quarantine I’ve had a lot of time to think about how I can be a better version of myself once I feel comfortable to go out in the wider world again.

1. Be more environmentally friendly This was one of my new year’s resolutions at the beginning, as it’s not exactly a secret that mankind haven’t been doing the natural world any favours with our carbon emissions and mass exploitation of natural resources. However, the beginning of lockdown showed how nature began to restore itself when human industry ground to a halt. The clear, pollution-free skies in Beijing; the dolphins swimming in the cleanest water than Venice’s canals had seen in 50 years and even the hole in the ozone layer has shown some signs of recovery. In my street, I’ve noticed that rabbits have started to build a burrow in the green space in the centre, which certainly brightened my daily walks. As we saw the world’s biggest cities completely deserted while the natural world was unaffected by coronavirus, we were reminded that the human race is here on the beautiful earth as guests, not as the master, and we need to respect our natural environment a lot more. That is why I feel even more inspired to reduce my carbon footprint after the lockdown. Whether that be using our cars less, stop contributing to fast fashion as much, eating less meat or doing more recycling, there are plenty of small, sustainable choices that we can make that will have a big impact if everyone does their bit.
2. Appreciate my own company more Before the pandemic, I was one of those people who always had to keep myself busy. Whether that was going to work, applying for other jobs, or going out to see my friends; I hated sitting on my own in my flat. I’d get terrible FOMO if I saw other people going out and enjoying themselves while I was staying in and I’d feel unsociable if I declined somebody’s offer to meet up. However, lockdown has completely changed me. I’ve realised that I cared far too much about other people’s opinions of me as (as cringey as it sounds) I really do feel as though I have found some form of inner peace. I’ve been concentrating on making myself feel better, rather than comparing myself to other people, by investing my energy in new hobbies and activities, such as learning French and running that don’t require other people. I know that a lot of people have struggled a lot with loneliness and other negative emotions from not being able to socialise with people outside of their household bubbles, and I understand that completely as everyone’s experiences in this strange time have been different. I certainly would not like to live in lock-down forever, as I have missed my family and friends but I no longer feel that I need to always surround myself with other people’s company, particularly if their presence doesn’t necessarily make me feel any better.
3. Take more of an interest in wider social issues It’s only July and 2020 has already been a wild year by anyone’s standards. Not only have we seen the pandemic put the whole world into lockdown, but we have also been more aware of the deeply ingrained racism that unfortunately still exists in society, thanks to the ongoing work from the Black Lives Matter movement and the global response to the murder of George Floyd. Normally, it’s to easy to see somebody’s suffering in a far-away country on the news but then get distracted by whatever’s going on in our every day lives and forget about it, but when we were all stuck indoors for months on end, we lost interest in our minor problems and took more of an interest on how the world was being run. When the riots broke out in Minneapolis, we no longer cared about not being able to get our hair cut as we were suddenly made aware of the institutional racism, police brutality and discrimination that black people face throughout their lives, in both Britain as well as America. We listened to people of colour as they described their experiences, shared black tiles on social media in support of BLM, signed online petitions and educated ourselves on issues that they didn’t teach us in school. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could still be compassionate people who educate ourselves on global issues after everything goes back to normal? Discussing how we can change the world over a pint sounds a lot more fun than gossiping about what the neighbours are doing.
4. Support local businesses At the risk of sounding like a middle-class snob, the coronavirus pandemic has shown us the darker sides of capitalism and there are various well-known brands that I don’t think I will ever buy from again, as there are much better people to support than their greedy CEOs (cough cough, Wetherspoons, Topshop and Boohoo). The lockdown will, without a doubt, have a devastating effect on the UK economy and all businesses are going to loose money, but the smaller, independent bars, shops and restaurants will be more likely to go bankrupt and disappear from our high-streets. In my own personal experience of working in hospitality, I have found that it is these smaller businesses who generally take better care of their staff, rather than using them as money-making commodities. The owners are less likely to be millionaires, but normal people who use the income from their business to support their families and pay their mortgages. Plus, they usually sell their products/services for a lot cheaper than the big chain, and isn’t always nicer to treat yourself to something that you can’t get a carbon copy from elsewhere?
5. Appreciate life a lot more This is my main point, although it does seem to contrast with the idea of the anti-social person whose afraid to leave the house that this post has made seem (I’m really not, I promise). 2019 was an awful year for me as I struggled to adapt to post-graduate life, and made some terrible decisions and fell out with even more terrible friends. I had lost a lot of my self esteem and felt so miserable within myself at the beginning of this year that I lost nearly all my enthusiasm for life. I felt like I was a robot as I was going through life, constantly worried about what the next obstacle would be and too drained of energy from stress and anxiety to get excited about anything… and then the lockdown happened. As I moved out of my studio flat in the middle of Liverpool city centre and moved back to my family home, nearly 100 miles away, everything changed. As I sat in my childhood bedroom in quarantine, it wasn’t the memories of feeling like crap that I remembered from the pre-covid days. It was all the happy memories. The nights out where I danced until dawn. Days out exploring new places with friends, and laughing until my stomach hurt. Family celebrations with my grandparents and all my extended family all together in one room. Even the freedom to walk into a coffee shop and order a caramel latte to sit by the window and watch the world go by. It might be a long time before everything goes to exactly what it was like before, and for over 44,000 families in Britain, it will never be again. But things are already starting to get better will, and nothing, not even a coronavirus pandemic will last forever. When I feel ready to go outside again and resume my normal life, I will make so much more effort to be more grateful for my freedom to do so. Life can be so cruel and we have all seen the awful things that has happened in the world this year, but there is still more wonderful moments waiting for us to experience. So make the most out of every opportunity, do whatever it is that makes you happy and never think that it is too late to be a better person. We’re the lucky ones who survived a global pandemic, we’ve got to know our worth.