The Aftermath of the Lockdown
22 May 2020At the time when I’m writing this article, it’s been about 2.5 months into the lockdown. However, it seems like 2.5 years. The coronavirus has affected our lives and brought it to a stand-still. So many businesses have been adversely hit and the economy has taken a huge dip. In my opinion, it has become the embodiment of the David-Goliath effect, uniting all of mankind against the virus that has caused mayhem in our lives. In terms of scale, it is ironic that a microscopic virus has now become the equivalent of a `giant’ monster that we are facing. However, the lockdown has brought us closer as a community and caused us to introspect on our prime directives a lot. In this article, I want to talk about some of these effects that I have noticed.
Firstly, the lockdown has brought us closer to our loved ones. Not physically, but emotionally and mentally. We are all spending more time with our families and reaching out to long-forgotten friends and cousins. I have spent hours together playing online games with family and friends back at home. Funnily enough, I used this time to connect to one of my flatmates pretty well. Pre-lockdown, we both used to spend a lot of time away from home in the university and had barely any common time at home. Now that we both had to stay locked in at home, we got to talking a lot and have been spending a lot of time together. Being away from home, locked out in a foreign land and feeling homesick, we talked about our feelings and empathized with each other. It’s ironic how it took a lockdown for this to happen when we were living in the same building all along. It was a bit relieving to know that I was not alone in this journey and that other friends were also experiencing this with their flatmates and neighbors. This lockdown has made us a more tightly-knit society indeed. We have begun the search for our support vectors.
Another amazing trend that I noticed is how student associations and communities took to online platforms to compensate for the lack of physical contact. It is lovely how we have managed to stay connected despite the physical distances separating us. I found it really fascinating to see platforms like Stay Delft connecting people with common interests together. Through this platform, I was able to connect to fellow poets, origami enthusiasts and food lovers and organize virtual meet-ups to share common interests, irrespective of the barriers of geography and time. It made me feel like I belonged and less lonely while staying alone and far away from home. People have been very creative and moved so many games and activities online- the extent of creativity and adaptability is just astounding and threw me for a loop.
This lockdown has given us more time to spend by ourselves and explore our interests and hobbies. Personally, I finally started exploring cooking and tried out various dishes that I had been procrastinating for a long time now. I also started exploring more origami and organized and attended workshops to meet more origami enthusiasts. I was surprised to know that there were established communities that I was unaware of. I have noticed a spike in creativity in general and it is breath-taking to see everyone’s creative juices flowing. We have finally returned to our long-forgotten hobbies and begun learning new skills. From a data science perspective, we have begun looking inwards and identifying our salient features and principal components.
To quote Arthur Golden —
Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn so that we see ourselves as we really are.
One of the most prominent side-effects of this lockdown is that it has made us more aware of our own well-being. This includes not only physical well-being but also mental well-being. It has made us realize the importance of having a strong immune system and how fragile we are as human beings. Looking at the large number of daily deaths has made me aware of my own mortality, thereby spurring me to eat healthier and exercise more. I have been experimenting with healthy food through quick and easy-to-make recipes that help me maintain a balanced diet. Growing up, I was a stubborn child who did not like eating my veggies but my mother always found ways to still get them to me by blending them into my diet in creative ways. Now, staying away from home and realizing the importance of my physical health, I’m taking a page from my mother’s book. I have learnt the significance of consistency in my daily exercise, food habits and meditation when I stuck to it daily for 2 months and saw the compounded effects.
For my mental well-being, I have been able to take some time out to meditate at the end of the each day and resolve the cacophony of thoughts in my mind before going to bed. I have also organized and attended some meditation workshops online with the Heartfulness institute that have helped me attain a stabler state of mind and dig deeper into my conscious. I have seen a positive effect in my levels of focus and productivity both. This, in turn, has led me to the realization that the untrained human mind is the biggest barrier and barricade to our personal development. It is a powerful tool that needs to be taken care of and used in the right ways. Meditating has helped me become more aware of my surroundings and be more present in the moment.
Zooming out, I have a new-found appreciation for life and the things that really matter. I miss the little things that I have always taken for granted until now — hugs from friends and family, spontaneous plans to hang out with friends, cook-outs with friends, the beauty of spring walks and my awesome flatmates (who are now thankfully back home safely). Spring is finally here and the weather is splendid but we’re locked in at this time unfortunately. I cannot imagine doing this same lockdown in the midst of a cold winter. I feel more awake to the beauty around me and understand the importance of spending time with those around me better. The folly is that all of this has always been there but we realize it’s significance only in its absence. We were all sleepwalking through life.
Needless to say, these are highly uncertain times and the situation is far from ideal. All we have is each other. More than ever, we need to be united and use the combined powers of data, science and technology to combat this pandemic. We are faced with an enemy that we know very little about and that is shrouded in a cloak of mystery. We do not yet have a well-tested vaccine or cure against it. Mathematicians and data scientists are building predictive models to try to map every phase of this lockdown but human behavior is too stochastic and we are basing these models on assumptions about the virus. The only fool-proof strategy we have right now is to that we are stronger as a community and we need to take the necessary precautions and follow social distancing as much as possible. On a personal level, we need to cope with the effects of staying socially isolated by gaining a better understanding of ourselves and finding ways to work or study effectively from home. We need to look inwards and identify what is most essential to our being and hold on to those features.
The biggest question is — what will happen once this lockdown is over and things start returning to normal(assuming that a normal still exists)? How will the economy bounce back and what effect will this have on our livelihoods? How will this disrupt our future plans? Can we hold on to our core values and emerge as better individuals and a stronger society? Will the aftermath of this lockdown contain these positive side-effects? Can we mark this catastrophe in our calendars with a positive highlight and make the post-lockdown era better than the pre-lockdown era?
To conclude, I would like to leave you with a poem that I wrote recently in the midst of this lockdown. Hopefully, it will serve as food for thought.
Unlockdown
So all those fears have come true,
So the lockdown is now real,
But we’ve been locked in for much longer,
Locked into the cages of our minds.
We have had blinders all along
Running on the race course of life
Too busy to stop and think
Too focused to look around us.
Tunnel vision has consumed us,
Our barricades have concealed us,
Our minds have locked us in,
Our walls have fortified us.
Can we now break free?
Can we release our locks?
Can we break the chains of our own minds?
Can we unlock ourselves?
Can we find our principal components?
Can we find our support vectors?
Can we find our salient features?
Can we unlock ourselves?