6 months of Lockdown… More gains than losses!
This lockdown we all have been wondering how much loss we had to sustain. How much finances, jobs, business, and lives were lost! The lost lives will never come back but the lockdown has opened our eyes to a new perspective that we may never have got otherwise.
If you look at the overall picture we realize that the gains have been much more than the losses. After all, life is not only about material gains. It is also about overall development as a person. So let me enumerate what I feel have been the best gains of this lockdown which otherwise wouldn’t have been possible in our ‘previous’ lives!
The most important gain has been compulsory family time. Before this, we never had the time to spend with the family especially the kids and parents for a long time at a stretch. It always used to be short periods of family adventure. There were never long stretches of heart to heart interactions and involvement in the day to day activities. All this and much more was possible due to the lockdown and these have created permanent bonds and memories for all of us.
The second important advantage has been our interest in various activities and hobbies that we always wanted to do. These may be career-oriented like courses and online classes or maybe personal oriented like music, cooking, writing, composing, or singing. This has given us the kind of satisfaction that we were always looking for and we all hope to continue using these skills in the coming future.
The lockdown has created a clean environment and fresh air for all of us that was never experienced for many years before. This combined with greater time and awareness for fitness, diet and exercises has made all of us extremely healthy and fit which probably never happened before. This will definitely help us in the long run to maintain excellent health and great temperament.
Personally speaking, I have spent a lot of time learning and understanding the art of spirituality and meditation in the form of Sahaj yoga which is the basis of human life and teaches us about Kundalini Shakti and Chakra clearance. This along with the fitness regime definitely helps to maintain better mental, physical, and spiritual balance.
In addition, we all have learned the new skill of protecting ourselves from various types of unhygienic practices, infections, and epidemics. Most importantly we have learned the value of cleanliness, taking care of our garbage and wastes, not contaminating our surroundings, the air, and the environment as a whole. All this will stand us in good stead in the future whenever we are exposed to such diseases and situations as well as in normal life. We will definitely become better and cleaner as individuals and as a nation at large.
This lockdown we have learned to do things on our own and not be dependent on others, something that we all have been practicing for so many years. We now engage in day to day personal and domestic activities, cleaning and maintaining the house, cooking, purchasing, repairing, and even cutting our hair! All this will make us self reliant and independent that augurs well for the future as finding helpers become more difficult by the day.
Also, all of us have also engaged in our own professional development in the form of attending webinars, professional planning, future endeavors, investments, and strategizing. This will definitely give all of us the professional and financial security that we need to secure ourselves and our families.
In addition, due to the financial constraints, we all have learned the value of saving, spending less, living with lesser amenities and facilities, as well as learning newer ways of earning in the form of alternative practices that include online consultations, investments, share market trading and developing newer software and ideas that make our work easy. This has definitely given us an option of a new and additional source of income and it augurs well for the future as well.
Most importantly we all have become better human beings in understanding that nature can destroy everything that we have created in no time even with a micro-entity like a virus! Hence we have understood the value of life in the real sense, understood that being too greedy will never take us anywhere, that we all should respect the small things in life like happy moments, freedom, togetherness, and love and not hanker too much after material engagements. We learned the value of respecting each other’s happiness, respecting life itself that God has given us and respecting every day that comes when we open our eyes in the morning!
I am sure with all these virtues that the lockdown has taught us we will not repent the losses that we all experienced in the last 6 months. This definitely is the turning point of our lives, which may be in the form of newer jobs, newer habits, a newer outlook towards life, and newer virtues! This will make all of us better human beings and create a better world as a whole! We must thank God that he has opened our eyes to reality and after this, even the non-believers will understand that there is something beyond this material world that needs to be explored and understood without which life would remain incomplete.
Dr. Harshavardhan Ghorpade
25 September 2020.