The fist-in-the-air moment I never got

I always thought the end of university would feel triumphant. A fist-in-the-air moment, confirmation that these really were “the best four years of your life”.

Truth be told, my university experience was a rollercoaster with pretty steep drops. In my final year, things finally felt like they were turning in my favour. When I heard the announcement “we are prepared to shut down” in lecture hall the day before isolation, I couldn’t believe it. Nothing was going to ruin the movie reel in my head, right? Not when things were finally getting good?

What followed was a flurry of adjusting to social distancing, somber trips to the grocery store and a tough decision to move home. I’d promised myself that I would get out of Ottawa as soon as I graduated. When that day came, I expected it to be a grandiose going away party, not a handful of goodbyes I never got to say.

The first few months of the pandemic, I felt as though my world was upside down, with no idea when things would be right side up again. 

And yet, it was comforting, the thought that I wasn’t the only one feeling this way.

While the pandemic made us more physically isolated than ever, I like to think that in some sense, it has also made us closer than ever before.

From mass applause for health care workers to community balcony dance parties, to elderly-only hours at supermarkets, to declining air pollution, there is proof everywhere of good news, even amidst newsreel heartbreak.

Surely this will not make up for the fear or the loss of the crisis. What it has done is show us the importance of life-saving science, the value of our essential workers, and the shortcomings of our social systems.

My hope is that we use COVID-19 as a catalyst for unprecedented cooperation in the face of future global challenges. That we use it to always be grateful and to never take the good news for granted. Above all, I hope that we treat every encounter we come across in our daily lives as though it’s a long-awaited reunion in an airport terminal.

This will end, even if we don’t know how or when. We have to keep reminding ourselves of that. And when it does, it will be a triumphant one, far better than the movie reel in my head was supposed to be.