To Be ‘Productive’ or Not to Be: Lessons From Living Through a Pandemic
Times have been tough, to put it mildly. This year started with a bang; then chaos ensued. It’s safe to say that nobody has had the year they planned for. The pandemic pushed us all inside our homes and yet, out of our comfort zones. We are living in unprecedented times in the truest sense.
Chaotic events have occurred in the recent past but none on such a global scale. We, as a generation, have lived through riots, revolutions, financial booms, depressions, and whatnot but never had we been forced to live with ourselves for so long. It may seem like a thing of the past for a bunch of us but for residents of some countries and few others who are facing a second wave, this is still the reality.
With an aim to self-isolate or quarantine, we were left with the challenge to move on with our lives, function fully but within the confines of our homes.
Essential workers, whose collective work has been invaluable, didn’t have the privilege to stay home. The rest of us still had work assignments to complete, meetings to attend, chores to do, our families to take care of but we saved time that was previously spent on commuting daily, getting coffee, partaking in outdoor activities.
We were left with more time on our hands than our brains could process. But is it fair to demand or otherwise guilt-trip people for not being productive during times of such mental and physical unrest?
Our collective mental health has taken a huge blow owing to the shift in our lives triggered by the virus. Countless many are still without jobs, many have lost their loved ones, most have lost the comfort of our routines- people, since then, have been a jumbled mess of nerves and are just trying to get by.
But people continue to amaze me with their resilience. All this time spent indoors has welcomed quite a few heartwarming realizations.
- Amid such devastating conditions, we, as a collective being, have come to appreciate the simple, elegant pleasures of life. We reveled in the highly rewarding activity of making bread. We dived right in to try our hands at making a simple coffee (dalgona). Many people took up or were rather forced to start cooking and discovered the therapeutic benefits of spending time in the kitchen. Like cooking, journaling, painting, and many such activities we discovered experiences that give an immense pleasure of creating something from scratch.
- It taught us the significance of living in the present. It’s not a reach to say that a good number of travel plans got binned this year and for the foreseeable future as well. Not just travel plans but all the important little gatherings that bring us closer as families and communities. But it’s a lesson in the transience of life. Some plans we have kept postponing may never even come to fruition now. We need to appreciate the time and opportunities at hand more.
“Always hold fast to the present. Every situation, indeed every moment, is of infinite value, for it is the representative of a whole eternity.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- It showed us that we could live simpler, clutter-free lives with just the essentials. We have given in to overconsumption and it has swallowed our lives, our homes, our minds. Living with the bare minimum services in the past months revealed to me that we could live with so much less than we think we need. So many of our purchases could be reduced and we would hardly notice any difference. Moving on, I am making an effort to buy and use consciously, with a purpose and I hope you do, too.
“One can furnish a room very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in.” -Francis Jourdain
- Our work isn’t what gives our lives meaning. The saddest yet starkest reality that we have been forced to confront is having friends and families around is what matters the most when things go south. From hundreds of thousands losing their loved ones to people finally spending some much needed time with their kids and families, the life-affirming significance of holding families close is not lost on anyone.
- Not every hobby has to be commercialized. Not everything we do in our time has to be for a badge on LinkedIn. We are more than our LinkedIn profiles, our CVs. We as people are meant to have mental downtime doing things that relax us, rejuvenate us and that’s nothing to feel ashamed of. Not everything we do has to uphold a certain standard. We don’t need to be professionals in everything worth taking an interest in. Some activities can be set apart to invoke joy and glee.
Our generation has been force-fed this narrative that every ounce of free time we have needs to be spent doing something that raises our value as human capital. But every activity doesn’t need to be measured on a productivity scale. Ambition does not equal over-exhaustion. I hope we move past the narrative of keeping ourselves busy just for the sake of being productive.
The year is drawing to an end and I use it as a time to reflect. Our lives have never felt as precarious as they have recently. We have all had a tough year but what we don’t usually realize is that we are all tackling our personal demons, one day at a time. Let’s make it easier for each other to live through such unforgiving times.
