DECEMBER 1 — If I were to describe what 2021 has been like for me, Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings said it best: “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
2021 doesn’t feel like its own year as much as it feels like 2020 being stretched beyond what we should be able to endure.
Years of mental health and suicide prevention advocacy and yet I struggle with being able to say with honesty that “it gets better.”
After the Sheraton Move, things haven’t gotten that much better for the country politically. The racial and religious rhetoric is accelerating, the promised laptops are still missing and it seems every week there is a new political appointee.
Being Malaysian right now feels like being stuck in the audience of a truly horrible circus where none of the performers know what they are doing and nothing about it is fun.
You cannot blame said audience if some start feeling it would be just easier to throw themselves to the lions than endure the show any longer.
The way forward
What then can we hold onto in these terribly uncertain times?
The economy is uncertain, the ringgit has dropped to its lowest level in years and now politicians are just telling people to just plant their own vegetables if they’re so expensive.
I think perhaps one of the few things Malaysia has going for it is that we have adequate supply of vaccines, now if only we could persuade some recalcitrant citizens to just take them already.
Lockdowns cannot be an option as neither the government nor the banks will be of much help, as previous lockdowns have demonstrated.
Instead we should just do what some countries have, which is impose lockdowns only on the unvaccinated or at the very least, impose more restrictions on what they can do or make them understand that no jab means a lot more testing for them than for other people.
The pandemic has broken many things; systems, people and I would rather not be so glib as to ascribe a silver lining to it, especially in the wake of so many deaths.
To quote yet another popular pop culture franchise, as Daenerys Targaryen said in Game of Thrones, ”If I look back I am lost.”
Trying to sugarcoat the pain and grief we are collectively experiencing makes no sense. I feel the only way is forward, to try to make a life despite how bleak the path ahead looks.
We must remake not just the world, but ourselves.
A joke I often tell my friends is that regrets and mulling “what if” scenarios are pointless because, hey, we could end up just getting hit by a bus.
Buses don’t care about your five-year-plan or your hopes and dreams, and neither does this pandemic.
I have also accepted the fact that our politicians do not care about our welfare thus it is a waste of energy to be angry, frustrated or sad about their predictable incompetence.
What I can do is vote. What I will do is take a break whenever I need it and not wait too long to rest before I crumple.
There will be days, for you and for me, that life does not seem worth living. Middle-age has however taught me that as painful as the days can get, with death there is just one outcome.
With life there still remains possibilities and that thing called hope.
May hope guide us through this pandemic even with hopeless politicians.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
