This story is told from the perspective of a young adult who reflects on how people talk and act towards one another during this difficult time.

“Let’s plan to meet when covid is over!”… “Maybe when covid is over we can go on that trip!”… “I’ll see you again when all this is over.”…

The phrase “when covid is over” is possibly the most redundant phrase I have heard in the past few months, but I don’t think anyone even knows what it means or when it is. It’s a phrase to signify that in the hope of this whole mess of a year being over, everything will get back to normal. Back to how it was in December of 2019.

The truth is, life probably won’t go back to normal in just a few months. In reality, we have no clue when that will happen. For example, back in October of 2020, my school in the Bay Area allowed us to come on campus to do online classes. This meant that, if we wanted, we could come to campus around 12 pm, then stay for the last two classes of the day, which were online, and then leave. The point of this was to try to find some normalcy for the students. In the end, it was only about 25 people who went on the first day, and that number kept decreasing because the experience wasn’t the same.

Almost about a month after they opened the outside parts of the school for students, cases in our area began to rise again. I’m not saying that my school was the sole cause for this rise because there were many precautions put in place to make sure the virus was not getting on campus. What I am saying is that the group belief system shifted in the Bay Area around that time. Everyone thought that since cases were decreasing, “covid is over.” As we know, that wasn’t the case, and instead, we had a higher peak in cases than before.

Essentially, even if we think we have everything under control, we don’t. The phrase “when covid is over” bugs me because at this point it seems like an excuse that nobody really knows when covid will be over, so just keep pushing out any plans that you don’t want to do.

In my honest opinion, I think we need to stop with the excuses because right now we have more time than ever to really work on our relationships with others. There are enough resources to bond online or even set up meetings in person (more than 6 feet apart, of course).

Anyways, I just think the phrase “when covid is over” is more of an excuse than anything and right now we need to be bonding more instead of pushing people away because we have no clue when covid will be over exactly and the thought of it seems more like a dream than anything else at this point.