“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
― Henry James
The summer is ending. And I haven’t done anything summer-ish this summer. Because of the skyrocketing number of covid cases all across the county, where hospitals are almost all overwhelmed in their capacities, I was too afraid to leave my neighborhood. This was the summer of regret and fear. But at the same time, I was able to exchange kindness with my friends. At least those experiences gave me an opportunity to at least see some hope in humanity.
Last summer, I saw hell. I saw something inside me crumbling down into pieces. Since I discussed what happened to me and my family a lot in this blog, I won’t go into details here again. One thing I want to mention is that covid surges in summer regardless of where you live. And this summer was no exception. As I wrote earlier, I tried not to leave my neighborhood, but still, I got a fever. Even though my condition showed a sign of physical improvement over the last weeks, I still feel sick since the end of July.
At the same time, this summer only increased my interactions with technology more than even ever before. Because I’m a programmer who loves interacting with anything tech, I enjoyed my daily online conversations with my friends through multiple social apps, such as Signal, Slack, LINE, and Google Meet. This summer, I became even closer to my friends than ever before despite the fact that I haven’t seen them face-to-face for a long time. While I was able to exchange a deep level of kindness with them, I always felt something was not right about it. I know online interaction is very convenient and fun, but I really miss real-life interactions where I can enjoy the atmosphere of the city, drinking, eating, and laughing.
I miss the pre-pandemic world so much. I didn’t have to worry about wearing masks all the time when I go outside. I didn’t have to face so much of the dark side of this world where I lost hopes in humanity. I didn’t have to lose my dad. I didn’t have to… I wouldn’t call it depression, but the reality I’ve been facing over the past year gave me a perfect reason to be depressed. But at the same, I never lost hope. I know it might contradict what I said, but I somewhat never lost optimism inside me.
At least what makes me “me” is this optimism that has its space in my heart for no reason. And it’s all thanks to my friends who shared part of their lives with me. I’m lucky enough to have them in my life, and it already means a lot to me. They gave me undivided attention to what I said and always gave me great feedback. In return, I want to be their support when they need help. The kindness I exchanged with them, especially during this year at least, gave me a reason to keep walking on. Life still needs to be lived – that’s the message they always have been sending off to me.
And one important factor in the optimism inside me that served me so well over the challenging time is also contributed by my programming skills. Thanks to the tech skill, I at least have something to work on along with my job. As I’ve been writing on this blog over and over again, my love of Android programming re-shaped my programming journey and my career goals. Code. Run. Experiment. My everlasting enthusiasm for the Google-owned mobile OS does not know its end. Its limitless possibilities of versatile integrations of many other external technologies all thanks to its open-source nature as well as its technological flexibility never ceased to amaze me.
All in all, the summer of 2022 is ending. Granted, I haven’t done anything summer-ish, but also I know that I don’t have to listen to that ‘ should-bes’. Especially in this age, things are not normal as before, we maybe reached the point where we all need to ditch the idea of ‘should-bes’ or ‘could-have-beens’. Life is what it is at the moment, and the level of control we’re given is so limited. In the light of keeping healthy mental health, maybe it’s way better to give our focus on what we CAN do and what we WILL do. Keep walking, keep learning, and keep growing.
Lots of love from Japan.
