APRIL 3 — It's been four years but there are still memories from the early days of the pandemic that haunt me from time to time.
The first day in lockdown, when it was so quiet I thought I was going deaf.
The ensuing days when ambulance sirens kept sounding each hour to the point I felt one would come for me soon, but for a mental health breakdown.
The loneliness which led to me distracting myself from the ever present dread by learning to shop on Taobao.
It wasn't all bad. While the neverending pleas for aid and assistance on social media were heartbreaking, for once, Malaysians stopped making their daily lives about the artificial divides of faith and race.
Kita tolong kita (we help us) was the rallying cry as in the crumbling of the sitting government, Malaysians learned to fend for themselves.
I'm glad that the rocketbuilding billionaire hadn't yet bought Twitter (I still refuse to call it X) because for many, it became a lifeline.
Twitter was the source for people to learn about vaccine appointments and availability, to ask for donations, to rally for each other and that included foreign workers who had been abandoned by their employers without money or food.
Meanwhile many of the rich and privileged were not showing their best sides.
Some were complaining about being stuck at home and not able to go on their usual holidays overseas while some complained about people complaining.
Oh, dear. It must be so rough for them to be stuck in their mansions, being able to send the help out to get groceries while many others were despairing without food or money.
Fast forward four years later and it is the saddest thing to see our hearts harden once more.
The rich are back to posting Instagram Stories on what labels they're wearing and which countries they're visiting via private jet.
TikTok, meanwhile, has become a cesspool of hate speech.
Where is the kindness and solidarity that we had for each other, when we knew we had no one to rely on but each other?
It is still the truth and that part has not changed, but I guess it's just too easy to be distracted by current affairs to forget when we used the internet to ask for help, to find people to help and together feel less alone at what felt like the end of the world.
We shouldn't have to wait for an apocalypse to see the best of us and the best in ourselves.
Remember, Malaysians, when you were good to each other and all that mattered was not what race or faith was on our identification documents, but that we needed each other.
We still do, if only we can remember that instead of giving in to the old distrust and artificial divisions.
Let's be there for each other, the way we used to be, without the threat of a terrible virus.
Because we shouldn't need to be facing death to learn to be good again.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
