On February 26 I walked to the nearest church with my roommate to receive our ash crosses for Ash Wednesday, a mark to represent sorrow for sins and to remind us of where we came from and where we are going. This symbolic event marks the beginning of Lent, a 6 week long Catholic and Christian tradition leading up to Easter. During this period, practitioners are encouraged to volunteer, fast, pray, and practice self denial more often than they normally would. This year, Lent was already a little different due to COVID-19. At church, we were advised not to hug and shake hands, and extra caution was exercised during Communion. Despite these small differences in the beginning, I approached Lent pretty much the same way I always do – I gave up social media and set goals to say something genuinely nice to someone and read some scripture everyday.
Going into this Lenten season I had no idea how much more I, and everybody worldwide, would be having to sacrifice. Within a month of receiving my ashes, I had started taking classes online, been told that the gym I worked at was closed, and moved out of my on campus apartment and cancelled my contract. Within a month, I had lost my relatively independent life, a good amount of privacy, and the friends that I was used to seeing everyday. I was isolated from the life I was so used to living, and the lack of social media made me feel even further removed. This is definitely the first Lent I have experienced where I had to give something up that truly affected my life, even though these sacrifices were involuntary.
As of right now, this is the closest I have gotten to real sacrifice. But being removed from the conditions I was comfortable in and used to gave me an opportunity to reflect on all the things I still had to be grateful for. I gave up social media voluntarily, and while it made me feel isolated from my friends, it shielded me from a great deal of panic and anxiety that I would have experienced reading through everybody’s posts on Twitter and Instagram. Although I had to move out of my apartment, I was able to come home to a lovely house filled with family and a pet that I love, and not everyone had those same luxuries to come home to. A lot of students either had to stay on campus with limited resources because their home wasn’t a safe place to return to, or they had to move back to a home where they don’t have the resources they need. I did lose my job, but I am fortunate enough to not depend on it for survival. I have parents who fully support me while I’m living at home. A lot of students are counting on federal aid to get them through this time, or scrambling to find a job at a place that’s still open.
While I fully acknowledge that not everybody reading this article practices Lent or is religious at all, I do know that everybody has had to make sacrifices during this unprecedented period. Some people have had to make a lot more sacrifices, or just more consequential ones, but everybody has had to give something up. It is important to know that it is okay to be upset over the things that you have lost, while also acknowledging all the things you still have, and being grateful that you didn’t have to give up more.