Eternal Sunshine in a chaotic mind
I still remember how it all panned out. It was the 14th march 2020, after a tiring Saturday at college, me along with my friends were chilling out after a disappointing meal for lunch. Out of the blue a mail drops asking us to vacate our rooms withing 2 days and head back to our homes for two weeks. Our feelings were happy at first because who doesn’t like a break from the taxing college schedule. 3 PM the mail drops and we were so happy about the holiday that we took the first available flight at 11 PM.Packing everything that we could in the little time available, we were heading into the uncertain times. Little did we know it would be turn out to be our last goodbyes.
The first few months into the pandemic, the whole world felt like it was very clueless, nobody knew how to save themselves from the virus. Questions like are all type of face masks effective? and is food delivery safe? were common and words like quarantine and bio-bubbles were becoming household terms. Picking up your phone early in the morning and looking at those virus number websites made us all feel hopeless and slowly and slowly we were coming to terms with how this pandemic isn’t a sprint but a marathon. The lock-down was inevitable at this stage , and this marked the beginning of a horrific marathon that followed. As students we were all pretty busy with online classes and internships but somewhere our mind was always revolving around the news that was only getting worse everyday. It was a little necessary to read the news to be aware about the virus but reading news in these times meant being confronted to images of trauma and negative statistics. Combining the pandemic with protests and violence really doesn’t make news and social media any better. All this negativity and uncertainty has given rise to such a state of mind that we’ve never experienced before. A chaotic mind which is engulfed into processing a plethora of thoughts like the recent inshorts notification, an ambulance siren passing by the street or a social media post requesting for medic help. It’s a mind that is exhausted from all these sufferings and has lost a sense of time. So how do we cope up with this mind in these tough times?
Our mind likes to wander a lot in different ideas but the biggest strength of it is how it can channelize all the energy into one task. The idea is to focus less on the distraction. If you think those messages and stories on social media requesting for medic help are depressing then maybe you can spend less time on those apps. Spending time over things you love definitely helps you not get distracted over the things happening around. Maybe you like reading or making music or gaming, do it! .Staying home has given all of us a few extra hours , instead of watching extra news and feel bad,it is always better to spend it on yourself or your family. Listening to music also helps you remain relaxed and positive.
This pandemic has brought the Earth down on its knees and taken millions of lives along the way, but it many ways it will also be a unique highlight in our lives. Even though it’s incredibly unfortunate that as a generation we have to go through a pandemic, in the end this pandemic will still be a small part of Earth’s history. Our history has seen deaths of much larger scale in the from of Wars, Famines and Holocaust.Comparing this pandemic to the bitter part of our history definitely helped me look at it differently because after all our ancestors had to go fight world wars for their survival and all we had to do is to stay home for the same.
There are so many changes that we’ve gone through over the past year, prioritizing our well being is the biggest of them all. Our lives have shifted online: classrooms and meetings are now over zoom and gaming has become a way to catch up with friends. While we’ve learnt to adapt to this online lifestyle, it can never replace the good old times. Yes all of us have missed out a lot over the last year from concerts to travelling but at the same time there are so many little things to look forward to like physically going to a cafe or walking around without a mask. I am sure watching the next marvel movie in a theater after a year is totally gonna hit different.
