As I pen my reflections, my mother is preparing food and my father is bringing fruits for me to eat. I’m not one among the thousands anxious about whether there are enough food provisions at home or how much longer can we sustain with limited money at hand. Thankfully, I come from a moderately well-off family. But it is sad that I hardly thought about what the marginalised population is going through and the difficulty this pandemic is bringing to each person, forget doing something for it.
This pandemic is turning the world upside down, even so, things look fine for me. Some areas look great — Family time, reading, cooking, upskilling, and what not! Some wealth experts believe that the current crisis can be a great opportunity for stock market investors. Well, I have always wanted to invest in the stock market, and now seeing the market corrections I have also taken to studying and investing for the long term. How ironic! On one end we have people without food, and on the other, people accumulating long term wealth.
Such inequality. In our world, even a virus is not fair. It is partial. It is impacting each of us differently. It is giving more pain to the vulnerable. Vulnerable as in not merely financially, by age as well. We all know COVID affects old people more. I wonder why a simple virus cannot be the same for an old and a young man. May be this view is flawed. But the sense I’m getting is that the inherent design of our world itself is flawed, the beauty is in how we navigate through it and create something better for all.
Most of our regular lives are hectic. Wanting to match up to the pace of everyone else, we forget everything and run. Pity, we don’t even realize that we are on a blind race. We neither know what the finish line looks like nor give a thought on to how is our journey. When we don’t have time for ourselves, no wonder we don’t think about other’s issues. But now with the whole world in a standstill, it is a good moment to halt, take a few deep breaths and look beyond.
All thanks to people sharing their outlook of life and the current scenario, it has nudged me towards this personal enquiry. I understand because I’m not affected, I cannot go about like its vacation. I cannot be indifferent to this crisis. Empathy, love, care, service — it is now more than ever all these values must take form. I cannot have them sleeping in lockdown when the world needs them the most. Little expression of these values by different groups of people at their level is what is giving a ray of hope to millions. Aren’t they true heroes? My sincere salutes!
COVID looks like it is going to stand the test of time. This will be researched and talked about for ages. Imagine our grandchildren coming and asking the story of this crisis. I wonder what I would tell them that day. What would be my story? ‘I sat and watched all movies on Netflix?’ Woof! That sounds horrible. Good that I didn’t do that. But then again all I did was only contribute funds to the movement. It would have been cool if I were also one of the heroes saving the day. Nobody is anyways stopping and there is plenty of ways to support anyways.
The truth is that I’m not ready. All people who are doing great service now, they aren’t heroes solely by their actions. They are heroes because they are in sync with their inner being. One’s action can bring about a fundamental shift in the system only when he is a master of his inner state. When the calamity struck and there was chaos all over, these heroes were the first to find themselves back, regain their composure and set off to help others. Whereas I, I’m only beginning to search for ‘myself’ in the chaos.
For a start, I’m catching up on all my pending stuff. Having a clean to-do slate is bound to clear my head and help focus on myself. I am reflecting a lot on how I am where I am today. As I’m reliving my journey and trying to develop a deeper connect, I’m able to relate to the concept of discovering our ‘True Name’ in the Eragon series. To put this in a nutshell— a person’s true name summarizes that person’s existence and discovering it gives immense power.
I’m also imagining how will things be when all this is over, the new normal. It looks to me like a new world. I may not have been a hero at this war. It’s okay. Each of us has a purpose in life, I’ll be ready when it is my time. I only hope this crisis remains a transformative experience for me and that I continue to invest time to turn inward and be better prepared.
So, who do I become in the New World? In the new world, I’m a phoenix rising from the ashes…
What is your metaphor?
