Alvin Soon

In 2020, the world stopped. One weekday, I drove through Singapore’s central business district and saw something I’d never seen before: the streets, empty. I could have parked in the middle of five lanes and had a picnic. I couldn’t understand what was happening.

That’s when I turned to history.

I hated the subject in school. History was boring and seemed irrelevant – plus, the teacher made us stand throughout class if we failed our tests. I’m bad at memorising dates, so I stood often! I dropped the subject at the first chance.

But reading about past pandemics helped me make sense of the present one: people panicked, denied, blamed – just like we were doing. They also adapted, cared, rebuilt. History wasn’t dead and dated anymore – it became a living guide.

But if human nature was following familiar patterns, events were happening that had never happened before¹. Who would have guessed that a virus would trigger a cryptocurrency bubble? Or that companies would migrate to work by video call? Or that a vaccine would be developed faster than anyone thought possible?

History, I realised, is a story told by a mad poet. It both rhymes and ruptures.

I’ve always craved certainty. I believed knowledge was armour: if I could only know what was coming, I’d be ready. But past events only look inevitable because of hindsight. To those living in them, the future was always unpredictable.

So now I try to prepare for range, not precision. We used to keep just enough food in the kitchen. When the lockdown hit, we almost ran out of things to eat. Now we stock more than we need.

I save more. I challenge my assumptions. Not for the next pandemic. But to be less unprepared for what can’t be predicted.

I still can’t remember dates. But when the poet writes another rhyme or surprises us with a rupture, I’ll know to pack a little extra water, have my people with me, and hold the lessons of history closely… if a little loosely.