There are lots of things to fill up a canteen with. Water, juice, tea, and other drinks are easy things to fill up a canteen. But how about something more abstract, like ideas or experiences. For drinks, they can fill up your thirst for refreshments within a canteen, but your canteen in your mind, will never be full. In order to try to fill it, you would need to use your senses, your opportunities, and most importantly, your unique sense of self within you.

Even through your experiences, you can fill up your canteen in your mind with many things, whether it can be good or bad. Even through the worst of times, you can make them better through your interactions with other people or with your loved ones. Your “canteen” is your personal record; it will always be there for you to keep, you will never lose it, and can save you in the direst of situations. All the knowledge and your understanding of the world will be the things that fill up your canteen, and so they are the most dearest things that you can keep with you forever in your life.

How does this relate to my quarantine experience? Based on what I said before, it means everything about my experiences is important for filling up my “canteen”. From all the fears and anxiety the news have given me and the sadness that comes as well, I go back to my “canteen” and see what it contains; my life as a whole and my gathered experiences with others and loves ones. Even on sad times, it really makes me happy a small act of kindness can turn a sad day upside down into a happy one. With understanding each other, we can do amazing things to make our lives more easier and happier in order to fill our “canteens”. There is a way to go through this quarantine together, and that is through our social interactions and believing in the strength of connections to survive this. On that note, we should try to reach out to each other and make our lives better by improving upon it.