With a pandemic raging, what the human race currently needs is a change in discourse — a narrative that talks about our ability to decide our future. While the past dictates the present, a collective consciousness allows us to shape our future by staring at the defeats of the past. The collective failure of governments and countries across the world in facing COVID-19, despite history repeating itself and expert warnings, is a calamitous indicator of such a defeat — one that unfortunately has a significant collateral bearing.
This pandemic has not only caused many casualties and grief but has also sent economies on a downward spiral. The only light at the end of the tunnel at this stage is a collective assumption that "this also shall pass".
For me, the lockdown was a time to plan ahead, by looking back. And the ability to look back came with the availability of time to think. For simplicity of sharing my experience, I broke this down into three sections.
Evaluation before the lockdown
Looking back, I wondered how I packed so much into the 24 hours of the day. From the untenable number of goals to the constantly shifting goalposts, it meant living every day with the only objective of keeping my head above water. The unceasing demand to win, succeed and make money was on autopilot. An unremitting pace of life buried in information bombardment through innumerable WhatsApp forwards that spanned the good that garlic brings to the evil that right-wing conservatism spawns. A never-ending stream of the digital fake lives of always-on effervescent celebrities on Instagram. And FANG’s relentless pursuit of consumer data through advertising business models.
Looking back, a much-needed stoppage of the rat race was perhaps in order. On top of that, it just seemed incoherent to me that three billion connected individuals on this planet were all rowing in a direction that placed their own good as a higher cause than the good of the remaining four billion. A poster that used to hang in my room during my college days serves well as a compass: "The winner of a rat race is at the end of the day, still a rat."
The primary conclusion was that most folks lived a life striving for success determined by the desire to speak more than listen. The 40-odd WhatsApp groups that I am part of have folks trying to express their views on sundry topics. The number of hours spent on the smartphone every day on numerous apps had clearly taken precedence over living life the way it had probably evolved to be. The next conclusion was that I was spending more time living a digital life.
Life during lockdown
The idea that our problems should be solved for us and it is unfair that we have these problems is attractive for its inertness that there is nothing for us to do. And yet it is horrifying that there is nothing that we can do except complain that this was passed onto us and mismanaged by someone else. The severity of pain caused by the pandemic in the real world made me wonder about my own journey. The first two weeks at home allowed me to recalibrate myself. Here are the six things I learnt from being isolated over the past one month:
Health: At the end of it all, the thing that unequivocally matters the most is health. The erosion of health is a nightmare emotionally, logistically and financially.
Family: The first concentric circle of support at the end of it all is family and the need to be there for persons who were there for you when you were younger and need you as they grow older.
Introspection: A break from the desire to communicate outwards forces a dialogue towards inner communication. An inward journey takes you further innermost with an aspiration to the find the absolute. This journey is as rewarding as the discovery. If nothing else, it certainly saves a ton of time by staying away from the smart but not conscious phone.
Unfettered social media and its evils: It is a re-engineering by tech companies with a profit motive rather than the social good. It thrives on an underlying human addiction — desire to get noticed.
The world will not end: The trench dwellers are usually the unsung heroes in any battle. In a pandemic outbreak, healthcare workers play the role. Mankind has always had a steady line of hands battling larger problems on the fringes of future — scientists, innovators and researchers. These folks have constantly worked towards pushing the boundaries of human capabilities.
Evolution: The planet as we know it has been around for 4.5 billion years. We, for all our glorious achievements, have been around for only 300,000 years. The average age of the mammalian species is a million years. As many as 99% of the species have gone extinct. We certainly have the capability and the mad dash to be a part of that statistics.
The human good norm
On the other side of the pandemic, a new norm may emerge — one where we share information across countries, collectively coordinate resources and work jointly to stick around for a few more millennia at least. And most important, live on a planet where we don’t hurt nature. We don’t need to buy into the neo-liberal laissez faire thinking of going against science and shunning vaccinations. Nor do we need to buy into the ultra-capitalistic privatisation of machinery at the cost of harming the planet. Most humans (me included) are reasonably ignorant of the science behind our existence. And every given instance when we are not, we are too selfish to care about the impact of our choices that threaten our existence.
It’s hoped that we will find the balance, sustain the journey and make sure we don’t over-consume and yet at the same time, look to go to Mars and beyond. It’s hoped that we spend more time with our families and take care of our health more. We care less for social media posts of folks we do not know and care more for the people we do. We turn wiser by spending more time individually in taking the journey of figuring out why are we here.