The pandemic has swept the world by storm. Lives and livelihoods are uprooted. We are all plunged into the fearful unknown. A time when uncertainty has become the norm, suspicion the new-age wisdom and mistrust its enforcer. Wherein, presupposed healthcare providers drain the coffers for their own personal gain. When patient cases are made to be rather of what it truly is. When those we look up to for guidance provide neither protection nor panacea to the ailment that not only ravages the people physically but psychologically, entailing a ripple of effect that we cannot even begin to prophesize for the future. Staying within the four corners of hollow blocks and cement, we have become hostages of our safety and security. Measures that are done to contain and corral, like a fever to curb the raging virion within, and yet the same means take its toll and worsen the condition.

  Isolation nurtures loneliness. Loneliness caters to feelings of hopelessness. Fear breeds the need for simplicity. Right or wrong. Good or bad. Fight or flight. Divisiveness fostered by the lonely heart and an anxious mind.

  And it may initially appear like a small thing. Who among us does not experience one or all of the above? It is such a small sacrifice for the wellness of everyone – and that is a legitimate stance. But a point can be argued as well: When solutions offer its own set of problems, are they solutions at all?

  Albert Maysles  once said, “Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance.”

  And you may wonder, what does this have to do with anything?

  Psychological issues reflect sociological concerns. We are a part of society as each living cell is a part of our body. What we take inside of us, what we take out of us, not only affects us individually. In this age where in we can communicate through the convenience of a single tap, what we say, what we hear, what we indulge ourselves in, quickly becomes a tangle of indiscernible information that could be as nourishing as a bag of chips and cheap glucose, deteriorating our own ability to think clearly and rob us
of the chance to act accordingly.

  To think is to prod, to puncture. Like tiny platelets, our palette of thoughts fills and flourishes us by every drop of ideas until we become so full we spill colors of expression that not only touch others’ lives but enriches our own. To think with clarity is to break free from the material confines and mental contagion that permeates current dreadful conditions and offer us the ability to act proactively that we may instead spread a vaccine to the circumstances that plagues us today, no matter how insignificant it may
initially seem.