At least two words nowadays disturb human minds more than anything else, as we talk, read and watch news and communicate through any medium available on earth. Apart from the actual risks of the virus, its economic fallout and restricted lifestyle, the use of 'Covid-19' and 'pandemic' millions of times leaves people further depressed.
Isolation of individuals for more than 500 days already has given them certain vacuum or a bit of breathing space to rethink what went wrong in life and society. Nevertheless, we can't be content - neither with the earlier preoccupations, nor with their absence. Each of grownup persons may have been rather triply troubled by the past, the present and the future, or, in other words, by regrets, discomfort and concern, respectively.
Thus, we have lost what we look for throughout life but are unwilling to review our mistakes.
People don't either accept this period as a hibernation. Enterprising ones are trying to call the current situation a new normal, which, apparently, it is not. Otherwise, why are you employing so much of efforts, dedicating resources to put an end to it, often disregarding the threats of infections?
Whether people admit it or not, they were not satisfied with pre-pandemic orders and level of achievements, not to mention anomalies and grievances that defined their worlds.
Now, many are fantasising the old realities, be it restlessness that they earlier rued! Neither are they free from it - those who are working from home are hardly finding time for rest. Others can't enjoy their leave from mechanical life when they are struggling for making a living.
It's sometimes puzzling, sometimes shocking how people - the poor and middle class alike - are meeting their 'basic needs'. The question of leading a 'modern' life does not arise.
The pandemic has disrupted the cycle of the economies that disproportionately benefited some nations and privileged groups, systematically alluring others to join the uneven competition. Citizens had been not only part of the system, but also collectively active in creating necessities for themselves that they couldn't afford to address with the current distribution and justice delivery systems around the world.
So, the crisis of money and more than 'basic needs' has not been created in 2019 and afterwards through the outbreak of the coronavirus. While trying to secure future happiness, society had already created a huge deposit of problems.
It was initially being said that the Covid-19 was going to change the world for good. When people can't digest whatever changes that have taken place by this time, it's hard to believe how far they would appreciate overhauling the system they live under once the pandemic is over, let alone acting for revolutionary changes. A major portion of them doesn't have the time to scrutinise if the powerful become more powerful and a few captured more resources during the pandemic.
Once again, the masses may be going to pursue a so-called normal life bothering least about the unhappiness that once haunted them. Their compulsion would be, as it is today, meeting what is demanded of them by the circumstances. Living may be characterised more by the 'old' trends than conscious endeavours to set new trends. Change won't come unless or until people are completely disillusioned about and angry at the system. Pursuing happiness has been politically recognised as rights of man in post-renaissance civilisation. Despite all progress in food production, clothing, housing, medical science and also education, we can't conclude people became happier rather than losing some key elements of joys. The world may fail to take a lesson of behavioural restraint from the pandemic.
We want to be happy by making more money, gaining absolute power, earning reputation, satisfying own ego or even sitting idle. All these, when done recklessly, bring unhappiness instead. The culture of a generation and of an era has something to do with people's perception of happiness. It would take sometime to understand how far the pandemic shapes the psyche of the youth and children.