The Lockdown is the Perfect Chance to Heal Yourself
I have a confession to make — I haven’t done much since COVID-19 became serious.
For me, the past year has been a period of tremendous growth.
After starting up an event business using just my crappy iPhone, I took on my next challenge and used my entrepreneurship portfolio in lieu of an internship to secure a job as a digital marketing manager for an up-and-coming startup in the fitness sector.
I was having fun amidst the hustle.
I enjoy being productive, to feel needed, to push the envelope, breathing life into the wisp of an idea and bringing people together for a common cause. It makes me feel alive.
I’m the type of guy that will keep going until something forces me to stop. And something did.
The COVID-19 pandemic took everyone unawares, and Singapore, where I stay, is currently on a month-long lockdown.
I absolutely detested it at first — but now I see the silver lining in staying at home.
It’s the perfect opportunity to relax and regroup, to catch up with family you might have neglected on your quest for excellence, and to remind yourself of the joys of living simply.
To heal.
A Rare Opportunity to Relax
“To rest is to walk further.”
— Chinese saying
(休息是为了走更长的路)
These are unprecedented times.
We’ve never quite experienced a meltdown like this on a truly global scale. Everything is shut down.
And you should take the time to power down too.
So if what you want is to binge-watch Netflix throughout the day, go for it.
If you need to crack open a cold one in the afternoon to celebrate nothing at all, by all means, go ahead.
If watching gameplay footage (Final Fantasy 7 Remake, anyone?!) for hours or dusting off the old PS3 and getting some game time in sounds good, knock yourself out!
I’ve done all these and more during the lockdown — and you know what?
I needed that.
As adults, we often get lost in the sauce. We become busy for the sake of being busy, staying busy to escape guilt. The guilt of being unproductive, of not contributing, of not making the best of the day.
We all need time for ourselves. Some of us have forgotten that.
I know I did.
Explore Something New
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
–Walt Disney
Children follow their curiosity.
It’s how mammals learn. Through play, through joyous mutual interaction, seeking the truth with sparkling eyes and nimble fingers.
Many of us lose that sparkle when we become adults.
Through negative reinforcement, through pressure to fit in the “real world”, whatever that means, some people wind up having their childlike curiosity pounded out of them.
Laughing children turned into joyless cogs in a machine — a most cruel and unnatural aberration.
I have felt this pressure to conform, and have remained unbowed.
This social isolation period, take the time to indulge your inner child. Explore something new, something you’ve always wanted to do but was always too busy to, or too afraid of being judged to try.
There is nothing but time now, and no unfriendly peers around you to pass judgement.
I have recently taken to playing the piano, and I love it. Not playing the piano per se, but indulging my curiosity.
The joy of learning never fades. Picking up the first stanza of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata brings back memories.
Memories of childhood, of learning how to walk, forming my first syllables, to read, the tremulous bright-eyed excitement that is so sorely missing in so many of our lives.
It takes me back to a time where everything is tinged with the golden hues of innocence, and everything under the sun was possible.
Pick up something you’ve always wanted to do. It might be singing, or writing, or cooking, or making Tik Tok videos. It can be serious or silly, purposeful or purposeless. Anything at all — the only caveat is that you enjoy yourself.
Take the time to reconnect with your inner child.
Unplug and Introspect
“We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy’s fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure — your perfection — is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Some of my greatest personal growth came in times of paradoxically, me not doing anything. Times of intense introspection.
It’s easy to get caught up in the fast-paced madness of the 21st century, easy to lose yourself in the crowd of 7 billion, in the blend of the interconnected world that never sleeps.
This period of enforced social isolation is golden, then.
As you relax and explore new things, take the time to also explore the innermost recesses of your heart.
Still your mind. Take a moment to question. What are you feeling? Who are you, really, behind this socially-approved veneer? What are you afraid of, and why? Who would you like to be in the future, and how can you strive towards that ideal?
A moment of thoughtful reflection is worth a hundred times more than running around clueless like a harried chicken.
In Summary
This lockdown, take the time to relax. Spend some quality time with the person who’ll be with you your whole life.
You.
Reconnect with your inner child and indulge in his curiosity. Pick up something you’ve always wanted to do, for nothing but the sheer heedless joy of it.
Take the time to introspect. A great many problems in life are caused by people who are uncomfortable with themselves. People who don’t know who they really are and are too afraid to find out.
A healthy dose of self-reflection is a potent remedy for the soul, and there has never been a more apt time for it than now.
This lockdown, take the time to heal.
You’ll come out of it a better — and happier, person.
Thank you for reading my story. :)
