Covid-19 engulfed the world in the blink of an eye. I have been in kind of lock-down for more than one month, is called Movement Control Order: slightly better than total confinement, I can go to supermarkets and pharmacies. At the beginning when the lock-down started, I was full of anxiety with rapidly increasing number of infected patients day by day. Now the cases are in downturn. People in this country, Malaysia, appear more confident. I get used to monotonous life.
However, even if we can see light of hope in terms of the prevention of infectious disease, uncertainty remains in terms of economy and society after unprecedentedly long period of standstill.
Now in some parts of the world beyond-Covid-19 are being discussed. The situation is murky; right answers will be difficult to get.
Can we survive in this confusing world?
When we experienced this kind of huge obstacles such as 9/11 terrorist attack in USA (2001), Asian Financial Crisis (1997), or Great East Earthquake in Japan (2001), we often hear resilience is necessary as a tactics for life and business.
It may not be easy for us to find a way to absorb the enormous impact caused by the virus and bounce back from it.
An article “How Resilience Works” written by a journalist Diane Coutu in Harvard Business Review in 2002, which covered a number of survivors of 9/11 who overcame their trauma and found own right way, gave me how we boost resilience in a difficult situation.
Through the interviews to those survivors, Diane Coutu notes three points of resilience: facing down reality, making meaning of the reality, and make do with whatever is at hand. Though all of these would not be easy tasks, the tactics would sound much better than just being anxious about unfortunate events.
Since we are amid the war the fear of pathogen, looking at the next step beyond Covid-19 would make sense. ■