When Corona Ends: Time to make a little difference

Take care of five before five!
There are always two sides to everything in life; life or death, rich or poor, freedom or bondage, sickness or health.....I could go on and on. One funny thing about it all is that it takes someone that has experienced the two sides of life's issues to appreciate it. All it takes for a rich or wealthy person to appreciate wealth is to experience real poverty either directly or from a third party.

Someone that has not fallen sick for a long time and never had any reason to visit hospitals or witness ill health will think being healthy is by default and sick people must have somehow taken a bite out of the forbidden fruit. In early 2015, I got myself involved in a police case and I ended up staying more than fourty-eight hours behind the bar. Since that day, my perception of true freedom has changed. Every second spent away from incarceration becomes extremely valuable to me.

The limited movement and the total lockdown in some regions of the world as a fall out of the COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus has gotten a lot of people to start valuing what true freedom is. Even though I have learned my own lessons before now, this period gave me a nostalgic feeling of what I experienced while in the police cell. How do people who are serving jail terms cope? I cannot imagine the psychological trauma they have to endure. Little wonder that a large percentage of them hardly have a life of normalcy after serving their times without therapy regimes.

Even though no one close to me has the virus so far, my daily sojourn through the different social media platforms that I belong shows what people go through in the hands of the virus. Several people can be seen griefing about the loss of their loved ones while some are seen celebrating how their loved ones survived the throes of the virus. Worse still, some are seen talking light about the virus while others label it a farce. Different strokes for different folks!

All these experiences and more remind me of one of the sayings of the noble Prophet that says:

Take care of five before five; your health before you get sick, your youth before you grow old, your wealth before you go broke, your free time before you get busy, and your life before death overtakes you.

What will I do differently when Corona ends?
The lockdown and restricted movent during this period have taught me some major lessons. These include;

• Prisoners deserve more love from we free folks.
• Those who are sick deserves our utmost care.
• Money is useless if there is nothing to buy with it.
• Humanity needs to do better.

Consequently, after all of this is over, there are a lot of things I will personally want to do differently. The first three activities that are of priority to me include;

• Occasional visit to the local prison to hang out with inmates and show them love in whatever form I am capable of - materially or otherwise.
• Frequent visit to hospitals in order to show love to those that are sick in terms of kind words and/or material things.
• Increase myself in generosity to those around me and anyone in need.

There are many more lessons learned from the COVID-19 outbreak and far many more things I would love to do differently when the lockdown is over but those highlighted above are just the major ones. One thing I am sure of, however, is that my resolutions do not include visiting my favourite restaurant (I actually do not have any) or taking a vacation to my dream place.

Special thanks to @theycallmedan for providing the necessary catalyst for me to write again.

Thank you all for reading!