How has the definition of hedonism changed during the pandemic? Here, I take an exploration into this fleeting, chasing a feeling, and how due to COVID-19 it has been come to a halt and shifted my priorities.

hedonism | ˈhēdəˌnizəm, ˈhedənˌizəm | noun

the pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence.

It is Wednesday, March 18th. As I return home after a night out, I get a call from my mom telling me that Indonesia is going on lockdown and she wanted me back home. In the next hour, I remember frantically thinking about many things: my future, my classes, and my safety if I flew home. Three days later I boarded the 20-hour flight, stripping away my junior year experience and with that all the planned adventures I had scheduled this year.

For a typical college student on a Wednesday night, it may be time to head to the library to study for that upcoming midterm. For me, however, it begins with a “ping!” on my phone as I receive a text from a friend which reads “It’s senior night in the 90! Let’s go!”. Afterward, I begin to scroll down my home screen and see notifications racked with reminders I had set previously for “March 20 - Miami”, “April 6 - Frat Invite” and “April 10 - Coachella”. This behavior is relatively uncommon for a USC junior like myself. USC, being one of the top party schools in the United States, fosters this “work hard, play hard” mentality in which an undergraduate's life is classified by how many events they could squeeze within a week. In fact, I became so busy that it had been almost two weeks since I had last spoken to my parents. Before college, I had always considered myself a seasoned homebody. After 10 minutes of scrolling down my calendar, I realized I had turned into a full-on millennial hedonist.

With the rise of COVID-19 in April taking prevalence around the world, the lifestyle of a hedonist turned from one filled with liberation to one filled with restraint. College students miss out on some of the most pivotal events of their lives, as seniors have to miss their final spring break and graduation. Feelings of euphoria were suppressed as we dreamed about the return to normality, uncertain about the future. The world simply has hit “pause” in its giant playlist, instead of fast forward. We have zero control.

One of my favorite phrases in life is that every cloud has a silver lining. The coronavirus is a dark cloud that has consumed my urges of adrenaline and hedonism. It thus became pertinent to remain optimistic, and feel content in the short-term and not fearful about what the future holds. Essentially, this means living in the present and finding these silver linings to keep us hopeful. Armed with this new mindset, I started realizing and learning more about myself and relationships with the people closest to me. Here are some of my silver linings.

I grew up playing three instruments. My mom was a music minor herself, so I spent countless nights learning classical pieces on the violin, piano and oboe until my ears cried out in agony and my nails started bleeding.

When I was in High School, my ACT and math lessons took precedence over my time to learn music. With music being such an integral part of my life and so much time being freed, the opportunity to play again presented itself with the form of a ukulele.

By having the freedom to switch out the Mozart and Beethoven pieces with hits from La La Land and Maroon 5, the ukulele became therapeutic for me during home quarantine.

One of the serendipitous things about home quarantine is the ease of starting off the day with your world revolving around two essentials: a book and a latte. I used to love reading when I was younger, but my excitement was suppressed by a pressure to read long, tiresome manuscripts for my international relations classes.

I got this passion of reading from my dad, who reminded me to use my imagination when reading the adventures of Robert Langdon in Dan Brown novels and offered me advice from Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Reading during quarantine has revitalized the intellectual curiosity I thought I had lost a while back, and has given me the mental strength needed to remain positive during this uncertain period.

My dad grew up in Penang, Malaysia in a fairly different environment from the more urbanized city of Jakarta, Indonesia. When coming home for breaks, I would constantly rush off to meet my friends and would rarely be at home. I never got the opportunity to learn about his life before marrying my mom.

I had bought a card game called “We’re Not Really Strangers” and decided to play it with him one night. One of the questions was “What do you think I should know about myself that perhaps I’m unaware of?”. My dad told me that he always looked up to my optimism and persistence, something that he had lacked growing up in a more socio-economically challenging household. I continued learning so much about love, rejection, and cultural acceptance during the next few hours as we played on.

It was through that time in which I felt the time had stopped, home quarantine was non-existent and we were emotionally connected at that moment.

My mom is a warrior. Growing up, I rarely saw her as she was either busy running her two start-ups, cooking, or out meeting her friends after long workdays. One of her hobbies was using local ingredients to make traditional Indonesian desserts. My grandma had started growing a cincau (grass jelly) tree in her backyard.

These leaves emit liquid when pressed and eventually turned into jelly when cooled. I followed my mom into the kitchen, her stomping grounds, to see the warrior at work. Having not spent a lot of quality time in the kitchen with her previously, I appreciated this moment as we pressed, mixed, and conversed about my grandma and her childhood. Through the sweat and effort put in, we came out with a finished product and a newfound appreciation about the simple pleasures of life, all through a bowl of cincau.

I had the privilege to travel to 33 countries, and journal almost all my travels from 2011-2016. The feeling of wanderlust has always been a part of my DNA as I loved writing and collecting brochures to document the countries I visited. I wrote about the sky turning from a dark red, like the color of wine to a warm orange and finally a rich yellow that set the sky ablaze on top of Mt Sinai in 2011 — and I still remember the moment today nine years later in great detail. That was the definition of an adventure back then, and it has changed so drastically now. I am grateful to have a newfound realization for what adventure means. Just being able to get into a car and take in the Jakarta air, smell the local street vendors and taste my grandparents’ cooking has been a new adventure all in itself. The definition of travel and wanderlust has changed significantly. We define travel as the ability to make a journey typically of some length or abroad, and we are still doing so just on a smaller scale.

Within discovering these silver linings, I was able to truly re-define how pleasure didn’t have to be derived from large-scale events. My definition of hedonism changed from someone who appreciated on the grand scale to someone who appreciated things on a micro-level. Life is relatively simple, and it is these intricacies and hobbies we pick up in times of crisis which can help us feel alive and present at the moment. I’m coming out of quarantine as a book nerd, ukulele lover, a culturally-aware listener, cincau maker, and even more, hungry for more new adventures. I’m not promising that the future will get any brighter, but let us all enjoy this new form of hedonism and use it as a time for self-healing and reflection. I’d like to say I did.

The Changing Nature of Hedonism

Armed with my international relations knowledge, I wanted to

Armed with my international relations knowledge, I wanted to

Armed with my international relations knowledge, I wanted to

How has the definition of hedonism changed during the pandemic? Here, I take an exploration into this fleeting, chasing a feeling, and how due to COVID-19 it has been come to a halt and shifted my priorities.

I grew up playing three instruments. My mom was a music minor herself, so I spent countless nights learning classical pieces on the violin, piano and oboe until my ears cried out in agony and my nails started bleeding.

When I was in High School, my ACT and math lessons took precedence over my time to learn music. With music being such an integral part of my life and so much time being freed, the opportunity to play again presented itself with the form of a ukulele.

By having the freedom to switch out the Mozart and Beethoven pieces with hits from La La Land and Maroon 5, the ukulele became therapeutic for me during home quarantine.

It was through that time in which I felt the time had stopped, home quarantine was non-existent and we were emotionally connected at that moment.

The Changing Nature of Hedonism

How has the definition of hedonism changed during the pandemic? Here, I take an exploration into this fleeting, chasing a feeling, and how due to COVID-19 it has been come to a halt and shifted my priorities.

I grew up playing three instruments. My mom was a music minor herself, so I spent countless nights learning classical pieces on the violin, piano and oboe until my ears cried out in agony and my nails started bleeding.

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When I was in High School, my ACT and math lessons took precedence over my time to learn music. With music being such an integral part of my life and so much time being freed, the opportunity to play again presented itself with the form of a ukulele.

By having the freedom to switch out the Mozart and Beethoven pieces with hits from La La Land and Maroon 5, the ukulele became therapeutic for me during home quarantine.

It was through that time in which I felt the time had stopped, home quarantine was non-existent and we were emotionally connected at that moment.

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The Changing Nature of Hedonism