2020.

If anyone had known that 2020 would turn out to hold an unsettling resemblance to the many post-apocalyptic movies that we watch, I think we could safely take back our former collective hate for 2019. As the year progresses, more and more detrimental, never-seen-before events happen that threaten the safety of our global community. With the current COVID-19 situation that keeps students learning behind laptops instead of beside friends, or has touching elbows instead of hugging, has caused the entire world’s life to spin. A global pandemic reigns terror in all areas, especially America, the United Kingdom, and the EU, who lack the proper infrastructure or medical support to cater to the exponential increase of cases. It’s like, one day everything is normal. You touch lift buttons with your fingers to go downstairs and immediately rub the sleepiness out of your eyes right after. But the next moment, you’re sanitizing, washing your hands every hour and never hugging your friends.  As I sit here, not knowing whether my IGCSE exams will continue forward, at home with my sister who rushed home from College in America in the midst of her semester, I cannot bring myself to write about my successes and failures in a traditional personal statement. Yes, I have had plenty of ups and downs, but I am going to take this opportunity to sit back and reflect on something bigger than myself.

This situation that the whole world is going through: cities on lockdown, families on quarantines,  economies plummeting… I realise how extremely delicate our comfortable, priveleged lifestyle normally is, still is. Something that started China has reached the Netherlands and Ireland… I never realised the immense reliance on globalisation, the enormous rates of travel, and the incredibly complex lattice that meshes us together. The way this pandemic has spread has given me the reminder that nothing in life is certain, and therefore nothing should be taken for granted. Each one of us in this school was lucky enough to win in the game of luck. 

Another thing that has come to light is the importance of political infrastructure, including healthcare, public reassurance from the government, contact-tracing and much more. Watching how “superpower” countries deal with this pandemic (or don’t deal with this pandemic) highlights the dependency we all have on our governments or elected persons in power to take care of entire nations. Living in Singapore, the government has my full trust due to their constant transparency and duty towards their citizens. Every night I go to bed with ten more things to be grateful for. But I think of people who aren’t so lucky. We numbingly watch death tolls increase on the television. I think of countries that have seen fates like this since the beginning though. Refugees, displaced out of their home with nowhere to go, civil wars in Syria ripping apart families and daily life. What cruel game does fate play on people, and for what reason do people who don’t deserve these circumstances go through them anyway?

It is too easy, too convenient to forget about situations we are infinitely lucky not to have been born into, but it’s wrong too. And so, every day, I want to close my eyes and pray hard for anyone and everyone who needs it.