I was trying to make decisions regarding housing over the summer, classes and other long-term plans, when it occurred to me that I don't know when this quarantine is going to end. I was told our spring semester would be online till the end, till May. But this virus will go on, it will last indefinitely without any predicted date. I even remind myself that the Influenza of 1918 continued for a few years.
I don't really know how to go about life when I can't make plans for the future. It sounds selfish when people are fighting for their lives at the moment, and it is. I can apply for internships and research, but life appears to be out of reach. It feels as though I can't move forward. Or rather, what's the point?
It feels stagnant, and in the midst of that there are times I feel like I'm losing the progress I have made so far. It becomes difficult to build upon what I have done. Life is so uncertain right now. We can act as though we know September school will start and life will return to normalcy, but we cannot be sure.
It would not be fair for me to say that I have come to like this uncertainty, or that it is in actuality a blessing since so many peoples' lives and livelihoods are at stake. However, I am being forced to surrender to the present, whether I like it or not. I have to continue making plans, knowing fully that they most likely won't be enacted or will be modified in some way. Instead, I have to wake up every day and recount what I know and what I have to be grateful for that day.
This uncertainty has truly shifted much balance from my life, just when I thought I was finding it.