"We must acknowledge that life will be different, at least for the foreseeable future." – Boris Johnson

I was under quarantine in a hotel in China when I wrote down this ending of my early-terminated lockdown diary. All passengers on the same flight were taken to designated hotels after being registered, tested and categorized at the airport upon arrival. We are mandatorily required to stay in our rooms for 14 days. Each passenger in one room, but Dan was allowed to stay with me for he is only 7 years old.

Sonne said that the situation in London was continuously easing. Numbers of new cases and new deaths were dropping week by week; people were allowed to leave home more frequently and for more reasons; the tube was picking up its popularity again; government’s slogan had changed from “Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives” to “Stay alert, control the virus, save lives.” There are more signs showing us the UK is going to pull through the tough time of this pandemic.

However, there have been too many changes in our life since the onset of this pandemic, and some people said we could never return to the world before the lockdown again.

Impacts are indeed immense. There is no need to list the differences in daily life again for I have mentioned most of them in my diaries. But the awful news is that they may just be the tip of an iceberg. The real critical impacts are yet to come, to drop bombs on the lands of economy, politics, international relationships and finally each other aspects of human society. Take one thing for example: we used to expect that this war against a common enemy of humankind may promote the cross-border collaboration between countries. But things seemed have gone to the opposite direction. Latest developments in finding the origin of the COVID-19 virus aroused mutual blames between the US and China. The Sino-US relationship deteriorated drastically and may continue to drop to the frozen point.

But I still believe that the disputes and chaos are temporary; I still expect that the world after this pandemic will become better. That is because it is one way, and maybe the most important way in modern times, for the human race to evolve.

Viruses are always evolving. To tackle them, we have to evolve, too. We cannot rely on Darwin’s natural selection as viruses and other creatures do, because we are no longer bestial enough to leave our own kind to death. But we can evolve by accumulating knowledge, by sharing and discussing, by collaborating with and backing up others.

Evolution is inevitably accompanied by frictions, “birth pangs”, tarrying on the way or even sometimes backslides. But each time we get evolved, we become better us, and no one will remember and stick with those negative accompaniments.

London has been tortured by plagues, burnt down into rubble, and endured many other sad moments in the history, but this city has stood the test of time and got evolved into its modern shape. It will pull through the pandemic and the lockdown, and keep evolving into its future this time, too.

And, so will the world.