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Are you turning into a panda too?

A grown panda, on average, eats for about 12 hours a day every day. It coincides with the average eating time of a grown human during the quarantine. That’s why we call it pandemic. I recently found myself actually turning into a panda.

 

A grown panda, on average, eats for about 12 hours a day every day. 

It coincides with the average eating time of a grown human during the quarantine. That’s why we call it pandemic. 

I recently found myself actually turning into a panda. Since I’ve lately been following the same feeding habits (I wish I would also have passion for chewing bamboo instead of snacking on all types of munchies I could find at home), I also started growing into the same scale as these cutest bears. Besides, worrying about something all the time I developed pretty black circles around my eyes, while my skin turned somewhat white from staying at home. 

I’ve always been one of the clumsiest people I’ve known, but apparently I still had room for perfection. Over the last few weeks, trying to get my thoughts away from the global changes, I’ve watched so many animal videos, that now my natural habits are pretty close to fluffy cubs and sometimes to raccoons.  

My hands that were dry and harsh for as long as I can remember now, with constant washing, have completely turned into bear paws. I realized that pandas might not be big fans of colourful nails, so I coloured my three-inch-long gel claws black. No one will tell that one day it was a human hand anymore. 

Besides, I think I almost unlearned how to talk. Apologies to my respondents, I know it’s getting more and more difficult to understand the words behind this panda language, so I sincerely appreciate that you still manage to answer my questions. I still know how to think though, and I’m still reading, so the transformation is not completed yet. 

I guess when I see nice fluffy fur growing on me I should know that I made it to the final stage. But sometimes I forget to look in the mirror, and the husband cannot see the changes (it’s a special spell that’s put on spouses during a marriage ceremony. Often, once it’s broken, the marriages break in flinders). When you don’t talk to people in person anymore, there is a chance to miss this crucial point. So if I ask you for an interview and you hear roaring over the phone, please say “Hi, panda!” Even if it doesn’t help to stop the transformation, at least the word ‘panda’ makes people smile. 

But joking apart, what I'm trying to say is that the quarantine has posed some possibly funny, but still serious challenges on most of us. 

From the survival perspective, what we are going through is not a war, where people die and live like they are already dead, where the uncertainty is nowhere close to what we are experiencing now just because not only the quality of life but the very notion of life is under question every minute. (You don’t like not knowing what’s going to happen to your job tomorrow? Try imagining that you don’t know what’s going to happen to your kid’s life the next moment.) 

It’s not the Dirty Thirties crisis, at least not yet, it’s not as scary as a nuclear explosion, and not as destructive as most natural disasters.

So some of us have been through worse, but it doesn't make the current problems less real and important. 

We are trying to make fun of our new habits but laughing is just one of our defence mechanisms. We are shaming each other for seeing problems in staying at home, stocking and overstocking supplies, finding it difficult to maintain healthy eating habits or exercise. 

We are neglecting the lack of socialization. Yes, we definitely should follow the rules and stay home, but it doesn’t mean that such social animals as humans can in one day overcome the built-in need for the community. We try to keep ourselves away from worrying too much for a future that for most people is still way too blurry to seriously try to plan anything. We have overcome starvation, but even before the quarantine excess weight became another serious enemy humanity was facing. And now that enemy, along with lack of natural motion and focused exercising, is just gaining power. 

We are prisoners of our houses and thus of our own minds. And yes, this is not as bad as a war, but if we all come out of it as pandas, it will mean that the pandemic kicked us back as bad as a war.  

One day our grandkids will ask us to talk about the Great Pandemic. I guess my story will be about overcoming my inner panda. (Hello, the yoga mat!)