limited or no human interaction
Self-Imposed lockdown
Fear is deadly
She grew up in a hostile environment. Her country was surrounded by sectarian violence and political rifts. She was used to hearing gunshots. The news of mass killings was nothing new. What kept her going in the midst of all this terrorism? Her supportive family.
Time went by and she finished high school and got enrolled in a graduate program and started working as an English language instructor in a community education center. She was beginning to get hopeful about the future when one day all hell broke loose. It was the news of a bomb explosion. That day was horrible for her. She sat in front of a news channel watching raw footage of the incident. She cried her eyes out.
A few weeks later another bomb exploded and this time it was a few blocks away from where she taught. The next day, at the assembly, the principal announced the tragic death of two students in the explosion. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She realized the younger brother of one of the boys who died was her student. She went into the class and couldn’t look straight into his eyes because it had so many questions she could not answer. She couldn’t bear this anymore. It was one thing to listen to the victim’s story but it is a whole different thing when you are in close contact with the person whose loved one left the world in such a tragic event.
Her family told her to quit the job and stay at home because the space outside her home was no longer safe. Since then she is under a self-imposed lockdown.
10 years passed and in 2020 the most popular words were Quarantine, lock-down, isolation, and social distancing. All these words have specific meanings but it all boils down to one idea which is “limited or no human interaction”. She is wondering which fear is more deadly the fear of dying from viruses or terrorism?
