With more than a month under Enhanced Community Quarantine, and with just few instances when we were able to go out of our houses for necessities, we now want to go out and do our normal routines. For productive senior citizens like me, such an arrangement bars us from doing so. But is there such thing as routine now, or is this the new normal?
Freedom is such a much-cherished state or feeling of a person to do what he likes or wants for as long as it is within the bounds of moral and human conventions. Freedom allows us to do what we want for a living in order to sustain our families. We do not want to compromise the sustenance of those who rely on us.
Freedom is not, however, synonymous with a simple life. There are many difficult things about freedom; it does not give you safety, it generates moral dilemmas, it demands self-discipline, and it imposes great responsibilities. Yet this is the essence of man, and in this is his glory and redemption.
We also do not want to risk our protection and the protection of others. We don't want to be the reason why the safety of others is being affected. So we leave it to our leaders and experts to decide the balance between the two. If two equally important options confront us, decision-making is a massive challenge. Truly, when one trades freedom for protection, it doesn't deserve either. And so, when one has achieved his freedom, safety is also of paramount importance.
And at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world are faced with the degree to which we can strike a balance between freedom and security. And I know that making a decision requires a range of factors to figure in, backed up by reliable data that will help us make a calibrated decision.
Although cases and deaths are on the plateau, the world remains in a wait-and-see mode as scientists try to create drugs and, hopefully, a virus vaccine. But if it takes time to wait, it will certainly damage the economy too badly and so calculated action has to be taken.
From ECQ to GCQ (General Community Quarantine), we expect a gradual release of freedom that we once held. But this freedom comes with full responsibility, not only for oneself but for others.
Nothing is going to ruin the country if we take care of its health; and nothing can save it if we leave that health in any hand but our own. In a way and at some point, we lost our rights. But this is the sacrifice that we all need to free ourselves and bring us to a safe condition — free from discrimination, free from the virus, the path that we all want to go on.