The humbling experience of COVID-19

The humbling experience of COVID-19

Although there are many experiences everyone is going through during the COVID-19 pandemic, one thought that came to my mind, and was humbling, is just how leveling the pandemic is. What I mean, I keep seeing emails from various companies and industries, all explaining how they are in lockdown mode, limited operation mode while the world (USA and Canada is where I am located, that’s the extent of my world) isolates or quarantines, to “flatten the curve”. 

What triggered this particular article was an email from WESTJET. Although I’ve received email communication from virtually every airline I have ever flown on about their COVID response, the one from WESTJET finally hit me. Which is the thought that even the titans, behemoth magnanimous businesses, whose revenues are billions, who have to adhere to policies, and strict corporate structures and a plethora of other intricacies, is not protected from the pandemic. Nary the smallest or largest businesses are unaffected, rather, they are all affected equally, that’s is a humbling thought to me. 

They are all affected equally in that any company is generally as good as the customers they serve, if there are no paying customers there is no cash flow, if there’s no cash flow the business will seize to be able to operate. Obviously there are temporary solutions to cash flow problems during non-pandemic times. But even the titans of industry need cash flow. I know it’s obvious once you think about it, but for me once I took a deeper dive into this rabbit hole, the thought experiment was humbling.