Paradox of Quarantine

Quarantine, meaning :  A period of time when an animal or a person that has or may have a disease is kept away from others in order to prevent the disease from spreading.       

Though, the dictionary meaning remains the same, it mean differently to varied individuals socio-economically,psychologically.

During the nation-wide lockdown, It exhausted some people as they spin from household responsibilities to remote office work to remote classes of kids to checking upon on friends and family. Few were exhausted due to vast stretches of open time with nothing to do, some enjoyed by binge watching and scrolling social media,some enjoyed the solitude and some felt suffocating. This is the paradox of quarantine,while we had nothing to do still it has given us the time to reflect upon.

The paradox of quarantine is that during our times of covering and hiding, significant truths about ourselves may be uncovered and revealed

The novel Corona virus has introduced us to novel ways of experiencing life. We all go through life with various memories and encounters both good and bad and plan our future. But pandemic has shown many of us the retired future in some or the other ways, many of us are discovering our hidden potentials and newer interests. The forced quarantine has ultimately facilitated creative ways, communication, empathy etc . Humans are social beings with intrinsic goodness especially during hard times.

Don’t worry if you feel you are not doing anything productive right now. It can take time to move from uncomfortable boredom to empowering one. During boredom, I suggest watch your thoughts and see where they lead. These thoughts could be proven productive and might change your life and give you a gift of peaceful tomorrow and can leave positive footprints for future generations.

Lockdown has provided many, a long awaited solace.

Life during the quarantine has given us the opportunity if we choose, to appreciate the joys and benefits of being alone, without being lonely. Solitude, can give us the opportunity for cultivating our inner richness through reflection, reading, appreciating nature, talking to like minded people and much more. We look back at the choices we have made and realize that each and every instance of our lives presented before us a dilemma and we navigated through each dilemma by making a choice. We see a retrospective vision of the past, choices been made , roads not taken and understand the better ways of dealing and choosing in present and future. As we sing through all the choices we have made while re-conceptualizing the story of our life, we drive into a nostalgia, all sad and happy memories. People appear to us like the characters of some long novel .

Solitude is where you learn to accept and love yourself, enjoy every moment just being you and loving others. We are at a real crossroad now trying to shape the life the way we want to and make certain choices.