The Twelfth Night

Usually, on the blogoversary day, I eat some ice cream and share it with someone who is around. Today, I didn’t get around to doing it as the weather is chilly and in the current Covid scare, I don’t want to risk a cold. Of all the things that can be believed about this pandemic, I believe it was orchestrated to isolate humans from each other. It was brought about so we could be made islands and to make us unrecognisable to each other. This is a very effective controlling measure as it creates echo chambers. All of us know that nothing good ever happens in a chamber unless it is a chamber materialised for Dumbledore by the Room of Requirement in the middle of the night.

This year, I decided to blog every weekend just to stay in the habit of it because there’s only so much I can let the virus take away from me. For a while, I did pretty well, but I had my slumps and I let them be. When I wasn’t able to blog, I wrote in my journal. When I wasn’t able to journal, I wrote down facts. When I wasn’t able to write down facts, I stuck stickers in the letters to my pen pal. I consciously sought out new friends this year because I wasn’t sure what happened to *some* of the old ones. This was also the year that my family and I had Covid and while I did, a colleague at the workplace refused to help shoulder responsibilities and actively turned to dust a lot of the work I had already done. Finally, I shed my brown thumb and grew a lot of plants, and when the pigeon came into our window sill to do as she pleased with a pot, I realised that I had no business telling nature how to interact with each other.

When I recount some incidents that happened this year to a friend or in conversation with an acquaintance, I am surprised at how eventful it has been (primarily in a not-so-good way and sometimes, in a good way, too). I was so steeped in our collective human suffering until I met someone who behaved like the virus didn’t exist at all and said that the vaccine is a hoax. It is such an eye-opening experience to me that this kind of alternate reality exists and I never saw it up close. It did something to my mind, shook me up a little.

Tonight, as I write this on my twelfth blogoversary, I am only glad that this blog has survived and so many of us could, too. Make no mistake, we are in the middle of a plague that caused the death of so many people around us but we are still here, alive. Even if no one in your family has died, you probably know someone who has seen death this year. If this is not worth showing respect, attention, and joy to our lives, I don’t know what is. It is sacred to be alive, to be granted the gift of this body that is built exactly like the galaxy we live in. It is nothing short of a wonder. I hope I can remember not to throw it away. Time passes by, fast, and these days, if you listen closely, you can hear it go.