Learning from Lockdown: Towards a new hope

Once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.”

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

 

The world today is definitely experiencing what Murakami shares as a sentiment in his novel ‘Kafka on the Shore.’ Life was happening to everyone the way it used to. There was nothing that could possibly disturb our daily routines, our conversations so much that we would be forced to question it. Somehow, we as a human race had never fathomed a situation for which we were not prepared individually or collectively. And then happened the most incredible event in the history of mankind for which no political or financial policy was ever thought of. The world was slowly hit by a disease that felt like war. A microscopic virus brought the world to its knees and we could not do anything about it but only to adopt and adapt to the ‘new normal’.

And all this while I was constantly reminded of the universal fact that ‘Change is the only constant’ and that the one who would be able to understand this thoroughly will be able to survive the post Covid world. It is surreal enough to be witnessing this. Who could have imagined that within a matter of weeks the working styles, years long financial planning, socializing patterns, learning patterns and skills would be evolved in ways that the then normal will slowly become obsolete.

What is most pertinent here to understand here that we as a race are standing at a very crucial juncture where if we do not introspect and act, we shall be doomed. Nations as a collective and we as individuals should now have the foresightedness to adopt to the new normal and take responsibility for all our individual and collective actions. Practicing gratitude, empathy, sympathy and compassion should be the new behavioral normal. Something that I feel we had forgotten along the way. The greed for excess for everything needs to stop. In all our relationships personal, professional, our relationship with money or even for that matter with mother nature we have to practice patience, empathy, have to be more innovative and accommodating for better performance, fruition and survival.  As fate would have it we got ample time to make amends and unlearn everything during the Lockdown and now when the same is being lifted a conscious effort everyday is required to step into a post- Corona world where everyone needs to be a warrior fighting their own battles; though probably from within the confines of our homes with a hope in our hearts that we shall overcome someday!

 

 


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