Life At Slow-Mo

As each ticking of the clock brought us closer to midnight, in a counter-intuitiveness I wrote a Facebook post that said, “Thank God for 2020” with my avatar smiling. That’s it. I didn’t post any firework pictures with a bold “Goodbye 2020, Hello 2021!” Or the standard, “Happy New Year 2021!” No. I wasn’t sure what got into me that night, but I felt that in middle of the hailstorm of people congratulating each other for making in through the accursed 2020, the proper attitude was to be grateful.

Yes, 2020 felt like a disastrous year. Business-wise, as soon as Covid-19 became pandemic and the Indonesian government forbid gatherings of people to prevent widespread infection, our training company lost all business in the following two months. We had to start over from scratch. To avoid layoffs, we decided to cut salaries, with the Board of Directors taking the biggest cut.

The world changed since Covid-19. Nowhere was 100% safe, even in our own homes. We lost good people to the disease. Doctors, nurses, and thousands of other health workers passed before their time. Spouses, parents, children, brothers, sisters, the poor, the rich, the weak, the powerful, nobody was spared. Workers lost their jobs, owners lost their businesses.

2020 was also the year where we saw selfishness abounded. Shoppers got into fight over who got the last tissue paper. Ignorant folks refused to wear mask, up to the point of defiance to safety regulations.

We also saw some families fell apart. An acquaintance recently told me that the civil registry office near his home were now crowded with people applying for divorce. I was astonished the other day to find that a regency government in West Java put divorce application form at the top list of downloadable documents on its website, making it as easily found as Covid-19 information.

At a glance, we were many times worse-off because of the pandemic. Yet on the brighter side, we gained a lot from it.

We gained a new sense of compassion for others. People reached out to help those in need. Those who had plenty gave to those who lacked. Healthcare workers braved danger to help patients. Netizens with big hearts rally online to create networks of “caremongering”, where those in dire needs could ask for help from strangers, even those who were hundreds or thousands of mile away.

We gained opportunities during the quarantine to explore ourselves and our potentials. Many people who were stranded at home due to quarantine spent their time to learn new skills or to work on their forgotten hobbies. A friend used the time to hone his photography skills by taking online courses. One made shelves, chairs, cushions for his home. Another recounted the story of her friend who took French lesson. Many went to the kitchen and discovered love for the art of food preparation.

During the month of Ramadan my wife asked me to get some butter. I went to a big supermarket near hour home that usually well stocked with groceries. On that day, I stared in disbelief at the empty rack where butter were kept. Only three bars left. I took one, and the lady next to me took the rest. Most households in Indonesia used the cheaper margarine to cook instead of butter. Up to that day, I never saw a store running out of butter before. What happened was many people decided to make their own cakes and cookies, either to consume or to sell. The demand increased so suddenly that the store was caught off-guard and did not have time to restock on butter!

We gained a new sense of community value, both within and outside of our family, nuclear and extended. During last Christmas and New Year, instead of vacation photos abroad, my social media timelines were littered by pictures of family gatherings, mostly at homes.

A few days before Christmas, we were at home watching TV when suddenly we heard rustling at our front door. It turned out that a neighbor, thinking that nobody was home, was hanging a container of home made cookies at the door handle. In the next days, we receive more cakes and other delicious gift from other neighbors, which we reciprocated. We have lived in the neighborhood for over seven years, but this was the first time we got so much food from our neighbors.

We gained deeper faith in God. On the onset of the pandemic, we revised the projection of our business for 2020. We knew we had to burn money because there would be months where we could not make any sales. But we had the optimism that things would return to normal by September. and business would pick up and by December our worries would be gone.

What happened was in Indonesia, the number of new cases kept climbing. From tens of new cases per day became hundreds, and then thousands. The number even spiked in November. We then realized that even with vaccines, it would take a couple of years before the pandemic would be over.

We had started to move our trainings from classroom to online, but not all of our clients were enthusiastic about it. Not everyone was ready with the required devices, and not everyone was convinced that online programs would deliver the same result as classroom ones. Our sales teams worked very hard but only a handful of clients could be won.

With the projections off, we found ourselves cash strapped. We have burned a lot of money at the beginning to cover the first two months where we had no sales. At the time when we expected the sales to pick up, it instead trickled.

But during all that hardship, God never failed us. He opened resources for us so we could keep operating until this day. And we put our faith in Him that He will carry us through every day.

Yes, the storm is still raging. Yes, we have lost a lot. But as we sail through it, we better ourselves. We become better human beings, we become more courageous, and we have better faith in God. All that was possible because of what happened in 2020.

Indeed, thank God for 2020.

Feature Image: Blurred view of the Dead Sea. Photo by Stephen Siregar (2019). All Rights Reserved.