How my life has changed during Covid-19 year?

This is December.

At the start of 2020, we were celebrating the start of a new decade starting 1 January 2020. We were full of hopes that we would have a better decade than the previous one. Covid-19 pandemic destroyed all that. At the initial stage, I was still thinking wishfully that Covid-19 coronavirus would just go away in a few months just like SARS in 2003. But no, it has become an invisible virus that the whole world is still trying to get it under control.

To stop this spread of the virus, we have to keep a safe distance from each other and reduce social contacts. This goes against our normal behaviour of the past. Our lives are disrupted in a very significant way.

As for me, what have changed?

Like most people, our religious activities and festivals were curtailed. We could not go to Taiwan this year for our annual meditation retreat. What is a good thing is that we now sit for one hour of meditation every night at home. This brought calm into our lives during this unsettling time.

We eat dinners at home almost all the time. It is home-cooked meals in order to reduce contacts with people.

We stop going for our nature walks at nature reserves for the same reason. Instead we walked in parks and gardens where there are more open spaces to accommodate more people around.

We could not meet my brothers and sister with their spouses for birthday meals. There is still restriction in the number of people can gather together (five at the moment).

My wife and I count ourselves lucky because we did not have to go through work-fromhome stress since we are both retired. I could imagine this kind of stress like on-line Zoom.

At the end of the day, we do our parts to be socially responsible in the face of Covid-19. We do not want to add to the problem and want to keep the virus at bay. Looking back,

our lives have not been all that bad. We have adapted and changed our lifestyles to cope with Covid-19.