This pandemic situation has taught me a lot of life lessons. As a person who prefers to see the glass half full, I am looking at the positive aspects of life lessons. One of the positive aspects is gratitude, to be grateful and not to take things for granted. We should learn to be grateful for the daily activities that we are doing, thanks to our good health and environment which allows us to perform these daily activities. Before the pandemic situation, we used to take a lot of our daily activities for granted, on the contrary we deem then as mundane and boring at times, for example a jog at the park, having our morning cuppa at the café near our home, lamenting at the limited café choices that we have around our neighbourhood.
The other positive aspects is cherishing our family members and appreciating the importance of a family. A family gives us a sense of belonging and provides us the in-built support system, which is of great importance especially during current times, when we are spending 24/7 with our family members. Before the pandemic situation, we tend to spend more time with our friends, whom we feel are more fun to be with. We neglected our family members, whom we feel will be there with us forever and did not try to connect with them.
Other than teaching us the positive life lessons, this pandemic situation has also reminded us that life is finite and to spend our precious times on things are people who are important in our life. As a result, I have relooked into my life priorities and am using the current 24/7 time at home to reconnect with my family, especially my mum, who has been quietly providing me with the support throughout my life journey.
Rather than spending the time to watch one more season of the TV shows on Netflix, I have set aside the time to try out new stuff with my mum. I have made appointment with my mum, twice a week on “Learn Something New” session. There is a broad range of activities covered in these sessions, from learning life skills which include cooking, enhancing our physical and emotional well being, organisation skills which include organising our home and work stuff to intellectual skills which include learning a new language, improving our computer literacy skills.
The sources of these activities come online such as YouTube or Udemy. We have learnt a lot from the the currently trending YouTube clips. We now know how to bake delicious cakes without using the oven, make a mask without sewing machine and know how cut our own hair. We have also learnt Tabata and Salsa workouts from the fitness YouTube clips too.
We honed our computer skills and learnt conversational languages through Udemy and felt proud when we received our “Certificate of Completion” after we have completed the courses.
We have recently used two of our “Learn Something New” sessions to make the birthday gifts for my dad’s 50th birthday. Firstly, we searched through websites to come up with a list of 50th birthday gifts and narrow down our search based on his likes and dislikes. After that we learn how to DIY the birthday gifts for him – one is a T-shirt which we painted the wordings “My 50th Birthday – The one where I was quarantined 2020” and the other gift is a picture collage which we have made some pictures look vintage. He was delighted when he received our handmade unique gifts, making his 50th birthday a memorable one.
The bond between my mum and I have strengthened because of these sessions. We have also fully embraced learning is a lifelong journey motto. We will continue these sessions when we settle into our next normal, I have already set a recurring appointment with my mum with no end date to this appointment.