Quarantine. The Most Recently Added Word in your dictionary.
As sad as it is to see millions of people fighting an ailment that the world hasn’t seen before, I’m afraid to say that Quarantine is just what our generation needed right now.
To step back and contemplate on our many mindless activities & habits that had come to be our life.To take away a few thousand minutes from all the chaos and speed that rules our life.
To listen to the chirps at “odd” hours & gaze at the clear skies & to share our habitat with our companions & watch the miracles of nature that had gone quiet in all the loud emptiness of our lives.
We often measure the success of our days & lives by what we do when we step out of the house.But what do you do when all of that stops?
On 24th March, our Prime Minister declared a nationwide lockdown for 21 days. And then further extended it to May 3rd. At this point, we the youth, must especially question our role on our planet. All the non-essential startups are as good as non-essential multimillion dollar companies today. What remains, in such atrocities, is how far we’ve come in terms of science, technology & humanity. So we’re all really forced to ask ourselves— what are we doing here? And is what we’re doing important?
Are we using bio degradable resources to invent something that makes our lives better?
How's the Administration Services using its rational and creative juices at the same time to come up with a contingency plan in such a situation that has never occurred before?
It’s a challenge. But it’s a challenge for everyone.
So don’t worry yourself by thinking about what’s to come because mindfulness reminds us that’s not important. What’s important is the now.So how do we make good use of all the time we’ve been granted?
To start with, give yourself an hour, a day or however long you need, to ask yourself these 5 questions:
What is my one true calling, that one thing that I’m so passionate about that when I’m doing it, nothing else matters?
What are my deepest, darkest fears and why do I fear those things? What will it take for me to overcome those fears?
Who are the people that are truly important in my life? Have I been giving them enough time? Enough attention? Enough concern? Have I been making sure they are alright?
What are my personal goals in life? And are those goals SMART? Do I reward myself when I achieve one of those goals or do I just keep going mindlessly hoping to achieve it all one day— and that day never really comes?
When was the last time I challenged my own ideologies? Or I shifted my perspective after meeting a person or experiencing something important in my life? Am I flexible? Am I changing & growing with time?
Asking these basic questions will help with 2 things— one in getting to know yourself better and second, making asking questions a lifestyle. If you don’t understand something, ask. If you don’t understand someone, ask. If you read something on the internet, ask & confirm before you quote it to your friends. Ask before believing in myths & rumours.
If you really think about it, what we’re experiencing today is once in a lifetime experience. And it's all going to come crashing down sooner or later and knowing you & I, we’re then going to look back on this time and think about all those things that we could have done with all this extra time we had on our hands. But what we actually did was watch a little more Netflix, sleep a little extra and complain about this forced Quarantine.