Quarantine of the Mind
Months after the beginning and spread of a global pandemic, here we are. While there is a large part of the population struggling to get through the disease, the rest of us are locked up inside our homes, quarantined.
Quarantine has probably become the most used word of this year. Social media opens up to simply numerous memes and jokes on this, constant complaints about being locked up at our homes, about introverts having the time of their lives and extroverts struggling to make it through. While we all know that we’re facing a larger danger together, perhaps this is another one of our weird ways to cope up with the peril the pandemic has put us in.
Plenty of healthcare experts around the world keep reminding us that this pandemic, apart from affecting people with the virus, takes an emotional toll on all the people protecting themselves at home, as well. The psychological effects of social isolation are many. With many people losing their jobs, the global economy taking a turn for the worse, with us trapped in our homes having to depend on our phones and electronic devices for little escapes, there will definitely be a surge in the cases of anxiety and depression by the end of this lock-down period.
It definitely would be a lot better if we could find a way to make the best of this time. No, I did not mean that this is the perfect time to maximize productivity. But if and only if there is nothing you can do to help the situation at hand, except staying at home, and if you think that the overuse of social media is driving you crazy, this could be the right time to take a break. Most of us have been stuck in this deadly rat race since the moment we actually learnt to run, and we never got to stop to take rest. We all know why. It isn’t any treadmill we’re running on. The moment we stepped into the arena, the whole thing turned into a stampede, and one false move could have been fatal. And that has brought us to where we are today — people waging war against themselves, running for reasons they themselves don’t know, turning a blind eye to the earth and millions of other organisms that live on it. The advent of a proliferating virus, has brought the world to its knees. A simple reminder to notify us of our fragility perhaps.
What would it mean, if you could use this time to rediscover the person you lost somewhere while running the race? For the privileged millennial, who binge watches TV series’ and complains about the quarantine eroding his brains, this would be the best time to look in the mirror. Find what you really love doing, that adds meaning to your lives and preferably helps somebody else as well. The world we live in, has been going good till today at least, only thanks to the services of healthcare professionals, and all the other workers who have been aiding them at hospitals, and everywhere else. Their combined efforts help the world (which would otherwise have come to a complete standstill) run better than it would have. Similarly, each one of us should focus on making our lives meaningful doing the things we love, helping someone else in turn. Keep the good going.
With all the social distancing, social media is quite necessary for us to stay connected. But if the over-use of it is quite a concern, given that we have a lot of time on our hands, toning it down would be the right choice. Keeping away from your social circles, reduces the influence anyone else has on you to a great extent. If you align it with a social media break as well, this might be when you get to quarantine your minds, to look deeply into yourself, organize your priorities, identify your innate traits, set your long term goals and analyse the route that will get you there! Rather than not stopping the race, just to keep doing things (which you’ve no clue why you’re doing in the first place), using this time to take a pause, observe and act, will be way more ideal. Don’t get me wrong. To stay alive at this time, smoothly, without worrying about running out of essential commodities, is a privilege on its own, which a huge part of the world does not have. Most of us are also lucky to be in good households. If you are one of the privileged few, and cannot contribute in any way, use this time to work on yourself.
Take time off to rejuvenate your souls. Widen the horizon of your thoughts. With nothing or no one else meddling with your thoughts, you might even rediscover what you really love, and make plans to head faster to your goals. And probably the biggest lesson we learn from any crisis is that we’re all helpless without each other. So when you make plans for yourself, be sure of doing something that helps out somebody else as well.
This is perhaps the time Pablo Neruda talked about in his famous poem, ‘Keeping quiet’:
“perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.”
At this hour, the best for us to do, is to face this danger together, and emerge from the lock-down, with better mindsets and a little more clarity about ourselves. So the next time you open social media to complain about being bored, take a pause. Put your thoughts into work, and finalize that plan you’ve been procrastinating for years. Understand the individual you are, and start taking steps that will take you closer to what you love, and help someone else in need. Let us emerge from this crisis as better versions of ourselves.
