The virality of an apparently hard-hitting quote on social media “If you don’t come out of this lockdown with a new skill, more knowledge, better health, and fitness, you never lacked time, you lacked discipline” may seem motivational in the first instance and many might have gone into self-introspection but there’s something quite problematic with this idea. For starters, this lockdown period is portrayed as a sabbatical of some kind.
This pandemic lockdown or any kind of unsolicited confinement cannot be subjected to self-imposed diktats of self-improvement. Humans are certainly about constantly reviewing, redefining, and reemerging as an improved version of themselves, however, to ascribe to it an unwarranted level of anxiety for the same is not healthy.
Reports are suggesting that confinement of people indoors and insecurity about survival has put a tremendous strain on their mental health and it may emerge as a parallel pandemic of sorts. To add more to the woes, we live in a system that makes us assess our self-worth with how productive we have been. Productivity is so much ingrained in our lives that the line between work and leisure has faded beyond recognition. Even the supposed leisure activities are nothing more than work in themselves.
In this testing time, to add pressure on how we must be ideally spending this ‘time-off’ will do more harm than good. One cannot learn a new skill, gain more knowledge, or undertake steps for self-improvisation if one’s brain is a landmine of chaos and anxiety.
-Rewati Karan
