30 Brutal Life Lessons We Learned From The Pandemic 

1. To just be kind. Why won’t we lift each other up instead of being so selfish! Give one of your 18 packages of toilet paper to the 80 year old woman who can’t trample through the crowd. Wear a fucking mask, nobody is stomping on your freedoms. Smile at each other, don’t judge on what they look like. Don’t complain because McDonald’s gave free food to emergency workers and not you. Life isn’t that bad, and nobody is getting out alive. We make it harder on each other? Why?

We will never know the struggle each other is going through, why can’t we just be…nice?

2. Human contact is more important than we realize especially for people’s mental health.

3. Anything can happen no matter how absurd it sounds.

4. We need to appreciate our friends and family more. Life is short. We’ve seen so many people lose their lives too soon during this pandemic and we really should appreciate our loved ones before they’re taken from us.

5. Don’t take anything for granted, being able to hug family members and see friends and having a job and going to school etc.

6. It’s better to work on a problem when it starts rather than cover it up.

7. That no matter what happens, including a deadly virus, selfish people will always be selfish.

8. The universe is indifferent to us. You aren’t owed a better roll of the history dice than anyone else. Bad things will happen, you can’t fix them, just get through it.

9. That Hollywood movies might not be as unrealistic as we thought in regards to people reacting to emergencies…

10. That the truth does not care about your political views.

11. How to be alone with yourself. IMO people who are very busy and social are often seen as very mentally well, but if you can’t sit with yourself in silence for a good while, I think the busy is just masking the unhealthy. Meditation etc. is great for trying to unpack that.

12. Eating at home is easier, cheaper and healthier. No more fast food because it’s quick and easy, no more spending money on lunch when I can just cook something up or reheat it at home.

13. Nothing is permanent.

14. That rich people don’t actually drive the economy and aren’t particularly vital. All the workers that saved our butts during this are minimum wage workers or near minimum wage workers.

15. Things can always go down no matter how prepared we are.

16. Retail workers have feelings too. While you’re in our stores yelling at us for not having certain essential products, just know that we’re struggling to find that stuff for our families too.

17. That hygiene is fucking important. As a guy I’ve noticed too many times guys simply not washing their hands after going for a piss because they don’t think they need to. This pandemic has shown that washing your hands is extremely important. I mean how it took a global pandemic to get people to actually start washing their hands regularly boggles my mind. Seriously if you take a piss wash your god damn hands.

18. Our working hours are arguably too long and our work life is too busy. This pandemic had shown working from home is a lot more possible than we previously thought and a lot of work can be done quicker than previously thought. Some people have had more free time from working at home during this pandemic. I still think there’s a place for the office work life as well considering it also provides us opportunity to socialize with our work colleagues etc. but we need to give more people the chance to work from home if they wish to and our working hours don’t need to be that long.

19. We need to put our phones away sometimes and enjoy real life. Meet our neighbors. Have drinks with coworkers. Whatever. We are missing real life around us every day because it’s more comfortable to isolate with our phone friends. It took not being allowed to do anything for 6 months to see that.

20. If can afford an emergency fund, you should get an emergency fund.

21. Not to trust that our governments have our best interests at heart.

22. Respect people’s personal space.

23. Spend as much time with loved ones as you can. Because the chance to see them could be gone tomorrow.

24. Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

25. Never underestimate how stupid some people are.

26. Ignoring, denying, and denigrating science and scientists has consequences. Serious, life-changing consequences.

27. That false information spreads faster than the virus and it’s toxic and dangerous on so many levels. You got people dying from it, for example, someone in my country drank hand sanitizer because of some info on Facebook and that’s just one of the many examples I could give you.

28. We need to come to grips with the fact that, as a species, we don’t have a permanent lease on this planet.

We have to learn how to attack disease globally as a species. And I pray that this is what we learned. I fear that we have not.

29. People with disabilities could have worked remotely for years.

30. Health insurance should not be tied to employment.