A College Student’s Reflection On COVID-19 Through Poetry

During this time that the Coronavirus is affecting everyone, in America and across the world, I thought it would be helpful to reflect on this pandemic through writing and poetry.

Realize Your Role

Uncertainty fills our chests and clouds our thoughts.

With unending questions, unsatisfying answers and looming worries scattered throughout our beings,

Where, we ask, does the solution rest?

Hundreds, thousands, deluges of people live, right now, in this state of uncertainty and confusion.

For some, fear leads us to panic.

Others, foolish naivete leads us to further strife.

In a time like this, what we all must aim to comprehend is human life –

Its gravity fitting hand in hand with its delicacy.

Take the time to realize our connection within the interdependency of our world.

Humanity, the highly functioning basis of social animals, shows us this togetherness.

The slender fox glides throughout the flowing grass, 

As the speckled bunny hops its way through the bushes,

And the tiny insects climb atop dirt mounds in the soil.

The fox abandons this ecosystem and the bunnies throughout the land multiply,

Leaving the grass to only be left as mere stubs in the soil and the insects’ home to become upheaved and destroyed.

All life needs other life to survive.

Covid19 brings our society a battle posing the same dilemma –

The vanishing of interdependency and the flourishing of hyperindividualism.

Let us not leave our counterparts left to perish but, rather, be the ones to help them flourish.

Pandemic.

Its sound may be perceived as one to be feared or one that cannot be overcome,

But sometimes we have to look past the constrictions in our chests and the clouding of our thoughts to realize the bigger picture – 

Your role in the grander scheme of life,

The grander scheme of humanity as a whole.

You can be the difference. 

You.

View this pandemic as an opportunity to fulfill the gravity and delicacy of interdependency,

By living safely, productively, selflessly, 

Connected to the idea of a broader humanity, not one where the earth revolves around a single thought, being or career path,

But true to the philosophy of human reliance, dependency and connection.

Do not only live for today, but live for the millions who may not have a tomorrow based on the repercussions of others’ actions.

Stay inside, do your part, and do not take human life lightly,

Because it is the pure love for life and human connection that binds us to each other in the first place.

So preserve this purity, and realize your role.

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