It’s April 2020, the normalcy I’m so used to—work, plans, even my daily routines—begins to dissolve. There’s a weight in the air, a growing sense of uncertainty that I can’t shake. Level 4 lockdown was announced to be in effect from at 11:59 pm on 25 March 2020 and with it, the realisation that the world has shifted, and nothing feels certain anymore.

The streets around me are eerily quiet. It’s unsettling to see once-busy spaces completely empty. I’m a keen runner and cyclist, but even those (once) simple activities are restricted. The ability to freely move outdoors, something I’ve always taken for granted, is now limited. I have to adapt, finding ways to exercise within these new confines, but it’s not just the physical restriction that gets to me—it’s the loss of freedom, the feeling that the world has shrunk overnight.

On the work front since I’ve worked in hybrid mode in the past, I’m fortunate to have a smooth transition to fully remote work. It’s familiar territory for me, but I know many others are struggling to adjust to fully remote work arrangements. Over the last few weeks, I have been helping colleagues and friends navigate this new way of working, showing them how to adapt to tools and routines they’ve never used before. For them, remote work feels like another layer of isolation and confusion, as if the rug has been pulled out from under them in every aspect of life.

Yet, while I’m busy adjusting to a new work routine, I’m also grappling with something much bigger: the profound uncertainty that this pandemic has brought into all our lives. I try to create structure in my days, starting the morning with work or a walk or a run (where permitted) outside, but underneath it all is this nagging feeling—how much of life is really in my control? Was I ever truly certain about anything?

As the lockdown as far as I can tell will seem to stretch on to the next few months (?), the fragility of life becomes impossible to ignore. The systems that once seemed solid—work, travel, social interactions—have all been disrupted. We’re stuck in this strange limbo where the future is impossible to predict. I’m left wondering how long we can hold on to this illusion of control when something as simple as a virus can upend everything we know.

I think about how we, as a society, deal with uncertainty. We plan, we structure our lives, but this moment is forcing us to confront the truth that we rarely acknowledge: the future is always unknown. Living in this moment, it feels as though we’re all suspended, trying to find some footing in a world that keeps shifting beneath us.

I spend a lot of time reflecting on what it means to live with doubt. I realise that life has always been unpredictable, that our plans can be undone in an instant. The pandemic is just bringing that reality to the forefront, but it’s a lesson that’s always been there—one that we’ve maybe avoided until now.

For now, I’m trying to find peace in this space between the unknown and the familiar, learning to adapt not just to the external changes, but to the internal shifts that this time of uncertainty is forcing upon all of us.