The ongoing pandemic is a once in a lifetime event we all will certainly wish never happened. The hardships and grief it has brought to mankind across the globe have made us realize the fragility of human life despite the technological and scientific advances humanity has achieved.  The human spirit lives by the unwavering faith that life will be beautiful once again, very soon. And, to strengthen its faith, it searches for the positives and learnings in the pessimistic situation. While the positives are mostly common for all, the learnings are varied for each of us.

The pandemic has taught me the importance of following three things in life:

  • Being associated with schools, the pandemic has affected the cash flows adversely. It has made me realize my judgemental error in the business of putting all my eggs in one basket. Not that I didn’t know this, but I preferred to keep focusing on strengthening my current business rather than diversifying into newer ventures. The good thing however is that with the amount of time that I have now, I am now exploring new careers and avenues for generating income.
  • The pandemic made me realize never to take life for granted. I used to always have a long-term perspective of life due to which I would postpone many things to do when the time is perfect. Now, I know that the perfect time never comes, I have to create it. I started calling up my friends whom I was planning to call some fine day. I started teaching Maths to my son, I started playing with my little daughter and having long meaningful conversations with my wife. Above all, I started to live each day as a complete day, balancing all the areas of life.
  • I had been always confident and proud of the teachers in our schools for their teaching competency. During the pandemic, we were not able to pay their full salaries due to reduced cash flows. Our teachers continued to provide online education to our students, putting in extra efforts than they would have to during normal schooling. I shall always remain indebted for their dedicated services during these tough times. The pandemic made me realize that people are motivated more by a mission and desire to add value to human life than by monetary factors.

These are some of the lessons grasped the hard way… They were mostly known lessons but remained unrealized until the pandemic struck us.