It has been about four months now, and waiting has started to get tiring. Every step is taken, both mentally and physically, is taken in our home — the place we all dread now whenever we think of our schools that were filled with our favorite teachers and best friends. School was our refuge from personal problems, and our interactions with friends maintained our sanity. I agree with most and want to give up. After all, it is easier to give something up when there isn’t a reward. But how about in this situation? Is there a reward?

“You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.” – Mary Tyler Moore

The reward is coming out of this situation more courageous and braver. This sentence may seem like a desperate author trying to sound smart. Moreover, the words “courageous” and “braver” would be what some people, include me, would use to describe soldiers and victims of domestic abuse and sexual harassment after they identify their attacker, help put them behind bars, and use the incident(s) that they experienced as a way to become a stronger, braver person. However, now I know that I and everyone in this world can be called brave.

COVID-19 is the enemy. It put us in a cage and hurt the ones around us. Continuing to take the appropriate safety procedures is nothing less than fighting against the enemy. For the past four months, no matter how hard the virus has tried to enter our bodies, our masks have kept it away. As a generation, COVID-19 is one of the first major problems we have had to deal with.

We cannot give up fighting this virus. Yes, it is easier to take those masks off, socially interact with friends, and pretend there isn’t a pandemic going around that can kill you. However, taking the situation casually and trying to go back to the life you had when the world is trying to resist only shows that these four months haven’t made you a stronger, braver person yet. When living through a crisis like this, it is possible that this pandemic could be in a history book one day. Decades after all of this is over, students will be in their classrooms reading what this generation could call their hardship. Would you like them to learn how we stayed smart and resilient and practiced safety regulations to make sure nobody else would lose their lives to COVID-19, or would you like them to learn how we were foolish and gave up on being strong in turn causing the deaths of those dear to us?