Being into Quarantine
When the entire world was shaken by the terror of a pandemic, I got an obvious notification from the CEO of my company stating the mandatory policy of working from home. Now for a guy like me, who just does not know how to work from home, it was a soul shattering news. I was worried more about the gym and the ideas of inadvertently bulking my body started to haunt me. To support the claim, the entire country was locked down to prevent the spread of the virus. For the first two days, it seemed like a pleasing vacation season and I was busy completing my uncompleted stuffs on the Netflix. But after that, I just wanted nothing but to figure out a reason to be on the Earth itself. I started feeling like a futile creature yawning all the day. Fortunately, I figured out the situation and thought of doing something which I was not getting time for before.
Few of the things which struck my head were to start reading some books, syncing up with my old buddies over video calls, reading some new research papers, spending more time with my family (again with the video calls), etc. So, in the due sections, I will be drawing some insights from my experiences of the past few days. The books I chose were, “THE COURAGE TO BE DISLIKED” BY Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, and Angela Duckworth’s “GRIT, THE POWER OF PASSION AND PERSEVERANCE”.
In the first book, I came across an interesting way of looking at the world. So basically it is based on a psychology which tries to explain the subjective nature of human’s thought process. The nature of the world depends on how you subjectify it. The real world is pretty simple and we try to make it more complicated by looking at it in different ways. It also describes that anyone in the world can change and that depends on the courage of the person to leave its present state. A strong claim made in this book is that every problem which a person has is some kind of interpersonal relationship problem. It beautifully explains how a sense of inferiority can be used to improve oneself and it also distinguishes it from inferiority complex which is a when a person starts using some kind of excuse to avoid improving itself and then finally falls in a extreme state called superiority complex. One should definitely be reading this book.
In the latter one, Angela Duckworth, a psychologist explains how a “strived” person ultimately wins the final race over the “talented” one. It explains the importance of perseverance and grit in the process of accomplishing a goal by giving very beautiful examples. It also explains that whenever, we are unable to explain or undertand the process of a person who accomplishes something big, we term the magic behind that as the person’s talent. I am still into the book and I loved the way it is drafted.
I synced up with two of my close friends and while one discussed the trade offs between the skills and passion of a person and how can we move from one quadrant to the other for the sake of self-improvement, the other one talked about the current pandemic and the steps taken and the steps that should be taken in order to control the situation.
I am able to spend some more time with my parents. My mom is giving me some delicious cooking lessons and I am enjoying the homely food despite being far from them(though I miss them badly).
Being at home all the day is slowly turing out to be more productive and turing its face from the mundane ways. I am able to put my thoughts more clearly now, which were previously difficult to be expressed because of the tiring schedule.
From the climate perspective, the air seems fresher than before. The nature is balancing itself. Pollution level has reduced. People are cooperating by socially distancing themselves instead of clashing with each other in the name of religions. World is unified.
It is, without a doubt a very difficult time for the human race. While being in quarantine is absolutely needed and difficult for some, if we use the time doing the things we loved and did not have time to look at them lately and managing our schedule smartly, we can end up being happy and productive despite not being in the usual zone.