Before getting into counting the pain and problems I will start with a tip, “Count your Blessings“. It is a rather simple thing you can do to cheer yourself up within seconds. If you have a roof over your head, food on the table, electricity and water running, a place to sleep, you are much better then many lakhs of people on the earth. Further, if your health is reasonably fine and you also have family and friends to talk to, you have the luxury of life. Then if you have a job to trade your time and skills for some money you are even more privileged. Finally, if you have all this at the same place, you should not even complain. But like me, if you don’t have everything I listed above but just a few of them, be hopeful and thankful for what you have.

“When you feel sad, bad or angry just Count your Blessings, to calm down and rationalise your response, not necessarily to forget the cause”

Being alone and being lonely is never the same thing. Many people like to be alone most of the time and enjoy it, many others live alone and yet remain connected to their friends, family and colleagues over virtual means. While many people enjoy an elaborate social life, many others remain lonely even in most dense social setups. It all depends on the balance of what you want and what you get, that decides how you feel about your situation.

“It all depends on the balance of what you want and what you get, that decides how you feel”

The recent times have indiscriminately isolated huge fractions of world population from each other. However, each one of us experiences this isolation very differently. Some of us feel the divide between countries for our travel plans are ruined or someone from the family is abroad. Some of us feel the lack of domestic travel affecting us for similar reasons. But most of us are unaffected by the travel restrictions and miss going out to our offices, markets or gyms & parks. All of us liked our homes but the anxiety that results from restrictions and uncertainty is affecting everyone, maybe on different levels.

Loneliness and depression are creeping in while the world is bracing for the pandemic to pass. The economic meltdown is predicted soon after the economies will try to function after the lockdowns. Job insecurity is adding to the stress of the already frustrated working from the home workforce. All the factors that are mostly out of our hand as an individual.

All this brings us to the importance of maintaining our happiness and sanity more than ever. Every loss brings the possibility of a new beginning, but only those who remain capable of harnessing the opportunity will gain. The idea is to stay positive with focusing is on whatever is going good or at least not gone bad while it could have. Learning something new or something that we have kept on hold for later, can be the most rewarding outcome from the current situation.

Maintaining health is another challenge while restricted with lack of space, equipment and motivation. Well, same old Yoga is at our rescue as it doesn’t need much space or equipment and pandemic itself is the motivation to improve immunity.

We need to believe that no one is alone in this. Whatever will happen, it will happen to all and that everybody will come out together form it. With all the learnings from nature’s punishment hopefully, we will build a better world.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> until then >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

stay in, stay safe and stay sane ….!!!

©sarikatripathi

Ch 11

Ch 13