The Anti-social, distant Club

If anyone before told me that I will waste some of my early twenties’ days behind the bars of my house due to a pandemic, hearing Cardi B saying “CORONA VIRUS” in my head over and over, I would have never believed it. However, it’s happened, and here we are experiencing the first quarantine in our lives, at least the first one we will remember. We found ourselves unable to go out, locked in with our own selves and the people we live with. And the only scenario that could make sense is the detention setting from The Breakfast Club movie, where five extremely different individuals are locked together; resulting for them to learn more about themselves and others, and hence, their life changes forever.

As a generation, we are tremendously overwhelmed by how fast our life goes; it is hectic. This’s caused us have less opportunities to stand still for a minute and breathe. Call it capitalism, call it addiction to sense of productivity, or even self-distraction, but however, maybe that’s why this stasis feels somehow new and bizarre to us: as if the Earth sent us to our rooms, just like in the movie, when the five kids were punished with detention to think about what they have done. And for the first time, we actually have the time to rest and to relate to the insides of us and to the outer world. We have the time to be spontaneous, targeting, accompanied, and thankful. In the movie, the five kids acted dramatic and got extremely irritated by their detention as if it’s the end of the world, so did we. But perhaps, it’s the end of the world; the world, as we know it, is shifting, and we have to shift with it.

like it or not, we were at home thinking that we are going to extinct out of boredom. Little did we know that this experience of loss came with the regaining of our passions, selves, and talents. People started enjoying other activities rather than the ones that their profession requires. If we look closer at people’s Instagram stories, for instance, we wouldn’t help but notice coloring brushes, guitars and musical instruments, recipes and its results, pieces of written works, books, and more. Everyone got tired of being too bored, and therefore started to adapt; we started adding to who we are as people, rather than omitting from ourselves. Instead of wasting time in taxis, buses, and cars, we began doing things we forgot we enjoyed once!

“When this quarantine is over, I will…” we have been repeating this sentence for a while now. To be honest, I would have never envisioned I’d ever make an “end of the world resolution list.” But here we are and it doesn’t sound funny at all! The realization that we don’t want to waste our lives doing nothing gives us a feeling of targeted direction. Everyone now is planning to haunt whatever they shied away from, be more forward, act more freely, enjoy their lives to the max, and carpe diem! The act of communicating with one’s self also has improved; we talk to ourselves and we re-analyze lives. This somehow is very close to the scene from the movie when everyone sits on the floor, open their heart, and discuss who they’re. The iconic thing is, we all now sound like John Bender screaming “I WANNA BE AN AIRBORNE RANGER!” in the hallways.

Confronting ourselves with truth, we also have to admit that we lack this sense of thankfulness to whatever we have. This quarantine with its lack of sunlight, friend’s meetings, and social and emotional warmth has inspired us to notice the value of the smallest blessings that we’ve been neglecting. So, the next time we sit with friends in a café’, get ready to go to work, or even embrace someone close to us, we’re going to feel lucky, blessed, and grateful. We will be able to enjoy the moment we have, look straight Infront of us, and know that this moment, with its simplicity, is a gift that we should open with eagerness and gratitude.

I cannot lie to you and portrait the whole situation as rainbows and butterflies; it is a pandemic for god’s sake! However, within this thorn there shall be a flower, and maybe biting this bullet will make our jaws stronger. Because, hopefully, tomorrow the sun is going to rise: A different sun, not measured by being hot or mild, a sun that’s seen as a blessing. Then when everything is normal again, normal will not be an understatement, but rather a sign of healing, resilience, and grace. And maybe we’ll realize how this detention wasn’t that bad for those kids after all.