Living in the age of the corona virus means taking a closer look at yourself and the life you lead. It means stopping to appreciate the little things around you that you hadn’t noticed before. Here is what I’ve noticed;
After this virus and lock-down is concluded, two types of people will have emerged; the resilient and the weakened.
Resilience is built up by acquiring a new taste for life no matter the circumstances. It requires learning to adapt to a new situation in a way you hadn’t before , to search for unusual solutions.
It also means taking a closer look at what drives you and makes you feel alive. People who are able to stay home and still earn a salary, took a better perspective into what excites them and what they would love to be doing had money never been an issue.
Sports, cooking, gardening, reading.. All these activities became the center of our lives for 2- 3 and 4 months now and it seems that people are becoming happier.
Never before have the words“follow your passion” taken such a toll on one’s life. It seemed like the only choice we have now is to find our passion which pushes us to search into our core.
Nowhere can it be heard “I can’t I’m too busy” anymore, and time took a new role into our lives. Minutes merged into hours and days, spending weeks on a puzzle seemed like the normal thing to do.
Buddha said that the best way to reach enlightenment is to just “be”. He once spent 5 hours giving a sermon where he just sat and looked at a flower.
On the other side of the spectrum, a new breed of people was emerging or coming to light. People who could not bear the lightness of being and had to keep their minds “occupied” with worry and distress.
Fueled by the need to search for negativity, these people spent their time partaking in low energy activities such as watching the news and panicking for hours on end or overthinking and worrying about things that are beyond our control.
The main difference between the two is that some understood that they have to let go of control and accept life as it is. While on the other hand, the others kept blaming life for what it has sent them and resented it for all that it stands for, thus adopting the victim role.
Remembering that the Corona virus, like any other tragedy that has happened or will happen to you, gives you the freedom to choose your reaction.
Viktor Frankl once said that freedom is the choice to choose one’s reaction in any given circumstance. In his book: ”Man Search For Meaning” where he recounts his experience of being held in concentration camps during Nazi Germany and even in such a situation, where everything was taken away from him, one thing could not be taken away : his will to decide how to react.
If people can find pleasure in a lockdown and use it for their self-improvement, it just stands to show the adaptability of mankind. Survival of the fittest does not just mean physical survival, it’s the survival of the most moldable and adaptable minds that will not give up on life even when it seems life has given up on them.
