Living in The Pendulum
Like many other students around the world, I had the great honor to graduate as a member of the class of 2020. There is no doubt this has been an interesting year, it is like a gift that keeps on giving. At some point during this year most of us felt intense emotions, let them be confusion, chaos, anger, excitement, hopefulness, or complete withdrawal. We all find ourselves in very peculiar situations, and I want to share mine as a student who recently graduated from university.
I was home for the spring and did not get to experience the completeness of my last year of college. We did not even have a graduation, but that's old news now. More interestingly is how we are growing into professionals and adults in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic. We had hopes and dreams after graduation - some have hoped to move to a different country, continue on with their studies, or even start working in a physical place rather than a virtual space. Many of us are living experiences for the first time, just like me, starting at my first job from my laptop in my improvised home office. We have no preconceptions about what things are 'supposed to be like.' Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
The current state of the world is beginning to feel like normal, and I just find it so interesting how our human nature allows us to adapt to any situation. There's a really good book called "The Power of Habit" and it can be used to explain a lot of this, but maybe I will write about this book in another blog post. In any case, how can we even start to think about all the changes the pandemic will bring upon us, not only in business, education, politics, or wherever you want to look at, but in the way in which us, humans, will exist in the future?
Is this pandemic just a step closer to complete digitization? In many situations, is it detrimental to only exist online? I have found comfort in studying and working from home. In spite of its drawbacks, this new system that was forced upon us in less than 3 days has its perks. And let's talk about the Internet, such a cool place to explore, that now connects the greatest minds in the world and probably, somewhere, hides their secrets. I get curious and excited thinking about what our human interactions would look like when everything goes online. This is an entire generation of people learning how to live in isolation, and we might not even be able to see the full extent of this lockdown until many years to come.
Like everything in life, I like to think about this situation as a pendulum. There's no moment of crisis as much as there is no moment of success. There are simply events in a pendulum that is in constant movement; a spectrum of 'what ifs.' Nothing can be black or white forever, and we must recognize this rule if we want to know how to navigate this spectrum with grace - and seize opportunities. My point is: this is the 'new normal,' but everything that's new becomes older by the minute.
And to the class of 2020: we are not stuck in this desperate moment in time. We are a generation that will be able to confront difficult situations like no other, a generation that is growing into a broken status quo, and a generation capable of changing the world.
