Note: This essay was first written in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, but having dug it up after some time I felt it still relevant to today's times.

A few weeks ago, the topic of current times arose when texting a friend: the Coronavirus, the raging protests, the climate crisis and more. Through the sombre quiet of 10.22 pm, I divulged my own anxieties piling up from the swarm of worrying headlines, and the depressing thought that I may not survive past my thirties.

For a while, the grey ellipsis that showed him typing flashed on the screen, disappeared, then came back. Finally, a reply flashed on the screen.

"Sometimes I think that and just think you know what?

Maybe 20 more years will be enough.

Maybe I'll be content then."

After a longer pause, he sent, "I guess it saves us the trouble of our waning years."

We stewed in silence before I eventually sent a cute cat video. "Cute," he responded, and the conversation continued as normal. Till today I still don't know how to reply to his initial response; the fact that I am discontented with only having a mere phase of what my life could be hangs too heavy in the air. What hangs heavier is how deep down, I'm sure he feels the same way.

COVID-19 has struck all four corners of our Earth. Singapore is no different, and this hurdle that we are facing is one of the most frustrating to overcome. There is no way to take a running start, no springboard one can jump on to leap over this obstacle. Instead, the best way to act is inaction: wear a mask, and stay at home. Be patient and wait it out.

And as more bad news streamed in from all around us, all we could do was watch from the sidelines, from the daily newspapers on our doorstep to the blaring headlines on television and the whispered worries from people on the street. Will the riots ever cease? Who will get elected? And of course, among the youth particularly: Are we going to get nuked?

(Sometimes, bad jokes are all we can muster.)

Even then, how incredibly privileged we are to be safe and sound in these troubling times. How incredibly privileged, yet how incredibly frustrated we are that others are not and that our helping hands are unable to stretch halfway across the world for them. It is in this fragile sense of security that we wait out many important decisions that are being made for us as we speak. It's akin to being an extra in an action movie, I feel. Who is that average man in the cap halfway across the street while our hero currently chases down the villain? We don't know and we don't care. The bomb is not his to defuse, the war is not his to end, and the world is not his to save. He just goes to work. Comes home. Watches television. Goes to sleep. And if he dies at any point of this daily routine from some nebulous global threat he will be none the wiser.

What do you do in a situation like that? When you may only have today, right now, this very second that slips by as you continue to read this? But at the same time, as someone with the potential of so much life ahead of you? I suppose that is the paradox of living. To make the most of now, yet at the same time working towards a future you may never get to see.

Yet it is within this paradox that we make our best decisions. We must consider both; only considering the first guarantees a reckless future risking yourself and others while with the other you may spend your whole life waiting for nothing. We must have initiative, yet patience. Bravery, yet wisdom. What do we do in a situation like this?

We make do. Disappointed that she could not celebrate her sixteenth birthday this year my friend went around delivering little goodie bags on everyone's doorsteps, only informing us when she was in the car being driven away. Holding the bag of cupcakes you could almost feel the warmth of her hands still there. After all, a small gesture is all we can manage during these trying times.

What a great thing.

So we continue waiting through the pandemic. I practice piano, I try to paint, I learn to sew. My father watches all the movies he can before he is called back into work. My mother brushes up on Chinese, the language she never got to learn properly. And we all try to be kind because being kind is the best way to fulfill my previously stated paradox. Today enjoys the sweet happiness the helper and the helped both feel in their hearts, while tomorrow awaits the gracious, considerate and warm community slowly being built in the process.

After that one grave conversation we shared on lives cut short, I video-called that friend. I told him how during lockdown I'd gotten into sewing, and though I had been planning on keeping it a surprise, I leaked how I was sewing little mouse plushies for him and some other friends. I think we just both needed good news that day, him finding out about his future mouse friend and me finding out how people appreciated even the smallest things we do, even the most unfinished, unpolished and uneven egg-shaped plushie.

When we had to hang up, we waved goodbye first, smiling through the static, through both our computer screens and through the uncertainty every new second brings. Smiling wearily, yet happily nonetheless.