Confessions Of A Girl Trying To Navigate Adulthood

Will Everything Change?

Today, I was thinking about this pandemic (kinda hard not to!). Will things ever go back to normal? There was an article I read a month ago saying this lockdown might last a whole year, that social distancing is here to stay. Herd immunity needs at least 60% of the population to be immune for it to work and we're only at 1% at the moment.

Will there be a whole new cultural shift after all this is over? Will stadiums filled with screaming fans, city streets with a thousand busy people and daily commutes become a thing of the past? I mean, people are understandably paranoid now and will still be reeling with the after effects of a time like this many years down the line. This is not the first pandemic the world has seen and it probably won't be the last either but as our lifestyle, our eating habits and our general way of life changes, will the coming pandemics hit us harder each time? Population and pollution are at an all time high and will continue to grow once this gets over. Is it time to change things?

I was wondering the other day, now that most businesses are at a halt, and as economies of the world get ready for recession. What are the important things? This for me, always points to education. What kind of education have we been receiving and encouraging? The kind that churns out millions of workers year after year all set to tackle desk jobs and follow instructions. We haven't been taught to think, we have been taught to follow orders, groomed to take instructions from the next authority.

Picture this, what if instead, society supported a system where we are groomed to learn about the world around us, how real life works. How to work with our heads and with our hands. One where we are not encouraged to memorize facts but guided to reason out the why's and the how's. Think of an education where we learn science from a high school teacher and the Naga cultivator, art from the weavers and village artisans. Think of the kind of people this would produce, you'd have people running about pursuing actual goals not just comfort. We'd have a whole country where each state has people producing enough goods and services to support itself.

Nagaland with her many resources is all set to suffer if interstate trade is stopped because our people have only ever dreamt of government jobs. We have not learned how to till the land and work our hands, we have not learned how to mend our houses or our clothes. Are we ready to face the storm?