What’s On Your Post-Pandemic Bucket List?

 

To think about a post-COVID-19 world automatically sends butterflies into my stomach and makes my heart beat faster from an influx of adrenaline and excitement. A post-COVID-19 world is a time to look forward to, a time that’s in the future… well, I guess you could say it’s the future. For me, whenever I think about COVID-19 being over and the world returning back to “normal,” I instantly remind myself that nothing will ever “return” back to normal. This pandemic has changed our world – it has changed our way of life and our way of interaction. Technology now interconnects the planet and our dependency on it is something that we can never take back. So many questions arise whenever I think about the future, a future where the pandemic is something that people simply look up on Wikipedia. However, at the same time, so many exciting and exhilarating hopes for the future pop up as well. Therefore, I ask the question: what will you do when COVID-19 no longer plagues the world, and the world is your oyster? What’s on your post-pandemic bucket list? 

Though some may approach this series of questions with a “well, I’ll probably attempt to live as normally as possible (i.e., work, travel here and there, etc.),” I will approach this post-pandemic period with a large jar of aspirations. Oh, how I hope to travel the world and experience different cultures and ways of life! This past summer, I had plans to travel to Tokyo and Osaka with my family after I graduated from high school. I was also supposed to spend days upon days in New York City, and hike through the forests of Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State. Once all of this COVID-19 madness is over, you bet that I’m going to (attempt to) hop on a plane whenever possible and truly live like one of those travel vloggers that you see on YouTube! 

Besides traveling and exploring different countries and cultures, I hope to also see (and hug!) my relatives and hometown friends. Social distancing has made me yearn for physical touch with familiar faces; I miss bear-hugging my friends and holding on tight to my grandparents. I truly never knew how important physical interaction with loved ones was until COVID-19 shook our world. 

As for other post-pandemic adventures, honestly, there’s too many to count. Just being around other people and not social-distancing is something that I aim to do. Imagine just sitting in Central Park on a crowded summer day with large crowds of tourists, joggers, children, and sunbathers all around! Imagine Disney World with its hoards of parents and children waiting in extremely long lines for rides that last five minutes! Oh, how the times have changed. How my aspirations for these next few years have changed! Taking all of this into consideration, I now ask you, what do you have planned for our post-pandemic world? Will you try something new? Be adventurous? Hug your loved ones more? Or, perhaps in more general terms, live life?

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