These are the best of times, these are the worst of times. This is a time for a great transformation. Humankind must seek strength from the source, that is one’s, own heart. His failures have to kneel now. His escapades end. His run ends for he has no choice but to face himself.
The lockdown is for the privileged lot a great time of awakening. A great time to explore oneself and work with shortcomings. Before we all can do just that we have to understand what has changed in this period that is essentially stopping us from marching ahead gallantly. There has been a shift in the conceptualisation of a day. Yes, the day. Our days are not the same anymore. They aren’t 9-5 college followed by study, play, dinner and rest. Days were given structure by all the institutions we were affiliated to. We spent close to seven hours of our lives following a structure set by timetables and meeting routines, followed by work and thought around it for an additional amount of time. Our days had two dominant themes. Work and life. The life segment of the day was just about living up to the expectations of the family in terms of maintaining relationships and daily chores.
What has shifted post the lockdown is the dilution of this theme and the great understanding of how much time there really is. Our ‘self’ has taken the centre stage of our lives in all respects. We are our teacher, judge, friend and protagonist. We do have some studies to do, we also have some work to do. But more often than not it is far less than the amount of time we spent on these things before. We have got the time to rethink our lifestyles, our traumas and all our habits. We move by our own command and no one else’s. We are the master of our passivity and activity.
The hit on our self-esteem
My self-esteem was deteriorating considerably the more the lockdown stretched. After a week I realised that I was 40 per cent dependent on my college to feel better about my skills, my literary club to feel creative. Both these places gave me a lot of validation in terms of my skills and accomplishments. Literally seeing where you stand in terms of your skills really gives an almost invisible but very prominent boost to one’s self-esteem. While I was feeling confident without able to visit these places, I started to feel I may lose touch with who I am. Or my skills may totally fall apart after a point. Here is where the fear started to get real. I realised how much I relied on my routine life pre-lockdown to take care of my motivation to do things. The source of my motivation was external. This was not how I wanted things to turn out. The lockdown was radically different.
Inspire yourself folks, validation is out of stock.
We are having to brew motivation from scratch for there no one to validate our capabilities or our potentials but ourselves. Our inability to use time wisely comes from our inability to understand what we can do consistently. Hence random spurts of creativity only temporarily ward off boredom and then we are clueless. As long as our goal is to cure boredom we will come up with knee random tasks that we cannot do consistently. Before the lockdown, we were being driven because of the culture and discipline of institutions. Hence the process was passive. The current scenario needs us to actively construct every aspect of the day with hardly any supervision, without external validation of all the work we put ourselves up to.
Our self-esteem thrives on the comparison with others. We realise that there is a hierarchy when it comes to every skill and we place ourselves in relation to our peers to feel better about ourselves. We feel challenged by those who in our mind stand above us in the hierarchy. The hierarchy doesn’t work anymore. Your peers are not with you anymore(physically in a classroom, where you estimate what they do), there is no task as such with a common evaluation standard for you to judge how much better you are than someone else, for circumstances are visibly different. You can compare your social media accounts but that doesn’t help with where people are really getting on with their projects. It has become harder to estimate our relative position to the group we are a part of. There is no way to compare the quality of others’ work products in realtime. We cannot run from this uncertainty of our position in society. Indulging in bad habits as an escapade, also cannot sustain us for too long. We will have to turn around and face the world irrespective of how less we know of how others are facing the scenario. We cannot know how well we are doing we can only know how much of our duties, or responsibilities and work we are doing/fulfilling. Hence, its harder to feel validated by comparison. The quality of your work is solely up to your standards.
Previously, our efforts were dictated by how much effort your class is putting into something or say what standard an employee or a peer is setting around you. Now there isn’t a way to know “the standard”. It’s just you and your projects. You and your integrity and hard work. The only motivation that can inspire motivation is the motivation that comes from within. Its high time we realise that only intrinsic or motivation that comes from within is a sign of self-sufficiency.
There is no escape
We have nowhere to escape to anymore. We cannot just go get a drink with our friends any time we want. We can’t just get away. We are here and we are having to accept where exactly we are emotionally, physically and interpersonally in the landscape of our relationships. There is no scope for avoiding confrontation without creating for yourself an even more toxic environment. The people you live with determine your mood and your overall quality of life. Hence, this has created a need to sort out conflicts in order to avoid loneliness and awkward toxicity. One also has to address ones psychological traumas, griefs, and past failures. There is a lack of everyday highs that come from the people we meet; there is no distraction from one’s core issues. Hence, creating a lot of anxiety. We must not resist confrontation. Approaching conflicts with the mindset to enhance the quality of life can really help you untangle everyday qualms.
Emotionally, we all are having to confront our existential grouses and memories of bitter experiences. Past seems more tangible than the future, hence we ruminate about the past. Thinking of the future creates uncertainty, hence we avoid such anxiety but thinking about one day at a time can really keep us positively motivated to live in the moment with excitement to do things that are in one’s list and to ward off worries of the past. Conflicts that recur, need attention so every effort to journal these conflicts and to find resources online must be made. Simply exploring each conflict and writing about it also helps.
Self has taken to the centre stage
It is the first time in a long time humans are having to stand all by themselves for a majority of the time each day. Hence the self is at the centre stage. The ‘self’ is able to notice how every little nuance in the environment is affecting it. Our self is questioning every conflict because of the long stretches of time that are free for use. Our routines and the urban hurry is not here to take up all the space in the mind. Now the self has no excuse to avoid growth or do away with long due repairs. Yet there is this hesitance to do things, we feel out of sync with life, we feel incomplete and lacking. We don’t know who we are when our place of study and work is temporarily shut down. In one sense we have become our work. Our self-image, our self-worth and self-definition have become dependent on our work and the functions it implies.
Let me make this clear. The reason for this entire disruption in our emotions and anxieties is not because of the lockdown or the new online world of 2020 but because of our dependence on external institutions for our days’ purpose or our motivation, inspiration and validation.
The question is how do we survive this as graceful beings?
It’s a very elaborate question and its answer is equally elaborate. The adjustment to life must be less about depending on the regime of institutions for purpose and direction. All institutions are sources (of knowledge material or sources of challenge or income). Our purpose must not completely be linked with the regime that it dictates but must also come from what we want out of ourselves in the time that we are associated with a certain institution. The adjustment to life and institutions should not be devoid of a personal purpose that can be pursued with and without the institution. A personal purpose, a hobby, a passion always help in keeping up ones self-definition away from the work one does. Being driven for self-satisfaction kills the dependency on sources of validation and sources of challenge.
One always has goals of their own in case the external structure of life falls apart. One can chase one’s purpose without the need to be externally validated. That’s the only way one can attain flexibility. To be flexible is the ability to have a purpose, to be able to stay happy and to be driven no matter what changes externally. Sources of happiness, purpose and passion must be independent of external validation or external motivation.
Purpose recreation in the times of the pandemic
Constructing a routine that works on different aspects of yourself is very important. One should have time for meditating/journaling/mindfulness exercises, Physical exercise, a vent for creative energies/hobby/passion, time to reflect on ones world views/ politics/ morality. One must utilise the time at hand very effectively. If we do not utilise the time we have we create guilt and feelings of regret for our future selves. All in all, I wish you can be your own god. I wish you can look up to yourself as your teacher. I wish you can hear the calling of your higher self. I wish you feel like you can make the most of this time and lead your transformation.
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