Make the most of Lockdown

We have spent so many of our years busy being busy. We have been living that ‘treadmill’ life.

UK is now officially in lockdown.

We have been given an opportunity to come together as one, to save lives and save our NHS. At the same time, we have been given an opportunity to focus on being human, to breathe and to heal.

There is so much we can achieve during this lockdown period – trust this coming from a girl who has been confined to a room for 14 days!

Here are a few things that we can all focus on doing:

⁃ Spend time with those in our household

⁃ Connect with friends/family we may not have spoken to for a while, via text/phone call

⁃ Meditation

⁃ Prayer

⁃ Reading books

⁃ Do an online course

⁃ Learn a new language

⁃ Indoor workouts

⁃ Journal

⁃ Breathing exercises

⁃ Going on solo walks (currently UK is allowing for outdoor exercise once daily)

⁃ Cook together as family

⁃ Watching ‘feel-good’ movies/shows

⁃ Practice skin and hair care routines

⁃ Have games night with your household

⁃ Spend some time studying

⁃ Eat healthily

⁃ Practice gratitude daily verbally or in our journals; we have so much to be grateful for even in such crisis situations

⁃ Goal-setting

⁃ Limit our time online and increase our time offline

⁃ Go through our daily tasks at home slowly and mindfully; be present

Ultimately let’s use this lockdown period to focus on being human.

It’s time for us to enjoy our time at home. It’s time for us to be grateful for everything/everyone we have. It’s time for us to shower ourselves and others with love.

And guess what, we are saving lives and our healthcare system at the same time!

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Take off your social mask

We all have a social mask. Whether we like to admit it or not, we all do. Most of us even have our social mask so well defined so we can rally it out on our CVs, LinkedIn profiles, social media bios, or when someone asks the golden ‘Tell me about yourself’ question.

Want to hear mine?

‘I am a 26 year old Sri Lankan Tamil girl, born and brought up in the UK. I am currently working as a junior doctor for the NHS. I am also a Bharathanatyam and Bhangra dancer. I am a dance choreographer, events organiser and blogger. Above all, I am a daughter, sister, lover and friend.’

Fancy right?!

In the last 2 weeks that I have had to self-isolate, I have reflected a lot. During these two weeks, I was not any of what I described above. I was a human being in bed, confined to one room, taking regular paracetamol to bring my fever down, rubbing Vicks onto my chest and nose to aid my breathing; I hadn’t showered in days; I was not eating. Ultimately I was an unwell human being. That’s all.

I looked at myself as a human being. That is what I am. I am a human being. We all are the same. We are all human beings, trying to survive in a world that so desperately wants us to have a definition for ourselves.

This desperation is what pushes us to make decisions, say things, build stories that may not be hundred percent true to who we truly are, and what we have achieved. Why? Because we want to fit in. We want to feel validated. We want to feel like we have a purpose.

This forms part of the reason that I bid Instagram farewell. We are all so tuned into to thinking so two-dimensionally. We are all looking at ourselves through social masks, rather than as human beings. I found it all so fake and untrue. I found myself moulding into this 2D person. I saw people lie about their lives so openly, for attention. I was scared I was falling into this trap. The funny thing is, if we all used such technology as mere human beings, it probably would not be as exciting as it is. I needed a break from such superficiality. I needed a break from mindless scrolling. I need a break from creating dance content just to create a ‘buzz’.

It was a really hard decision. I have been going back and forth on this decision for at least a year now. I was scared of deactivating my Instagram accounts because I was scared that I would no longer be defined as a dancer, because I did not have an Instagram page that said I was one. It made me realise how much I was relying on social masks to define myself. That is when I told myself, enough is enough.

Socially I am living a life that every girl/boy my age could only dream of. Spiritually, emotionally and mentally, I was losing myself to social conditioning. I decided to snap out of it and here I am. Thank you to social distancing, self-isolation and self-reflection.

Self-Isolation AKA Self-Reflection

Last week I came down with a very nasty flu. I was feverish, lost my appetite, could not talk, had a runny nose, terrible cough and did not shower for days on end.

You can imagine how run-down and helpless I felt. I spent months working so hard to balance medicine, dance, travel, dance competition preparation, family and friends. I was ready to go back to work when I became bed-ridden. My boyfriend had to come and pick me up from Shrewsbury and drive me back to my parents house in London, because they were scared of what would happen to me if I stayed alone with no one to look after me and feed me food in a timely manner.

With the recent Corona Virus pandemic, my work place told me very firmly that I had to self-isolate for 14 days! 14 days!! When I found this out, I was overwhelmed. I was grateful to be at home but I started becoming so anxious about not going into work. I felt purposeless. I got so scared. I started overthinking what would happen with my medical training if I took this much time off. I started worrying about being bored at home. I was having an emotional and mental breakdown.

I started to spend more time procrastinating on social media, aimlessly browsing through Instagram, much more frequently than normal. This led to me becoming more and more anxious about the lack of activity I was doing. I felt like everyone was accomplishing things, and I was merely lying in bed, isolated from the world, and recovering from a basic flu.

Corona Virus (Covid-19) is what the whole world is talking about at the moment. Within the last two weeks, circumstances have changed from focusing on self-hygiene advice to quarantine/national exams being cancelled/schools and businesses closing. Therefore, when I was told to stay indoors, as a doctor I completely understood why I had to isolate. Nonetheless I felt guilty. I felt guilty for staying indoors isolating myself, when I felt obliged to help out the NHS and just do my job.

To think that the whole world population, known for our ‘busy’ lives, is now forced to stay at home and stay connected to our family during such vulnerable times, baffles me.

The world works in mysterious ways.

Everything happens for a reason.

I started to realise that reason when during the last two weeks. I deactivated my Instagram account. I started journaling again. I started reading again. I started engaging in positive actions which helped my overall physical and mental well-being. During this time of self-isolation, I started to self-reflect. I also started to reflect on worldly and spiritual matters.

Every single measure taken by us is to protect humanity. We may be divided by our faiths, cultures, social classes, but we are all living one common purpose right now – I do not how many of us actually realise it. For the first time since the day I remember, we as a world population are living as one. We are all living so purposefully to protect and save humanity. It is amazing what we are all accomplishing as humanity. I wish for such unity and love in all our decisions for our future, even after corona virus has died down (which I firmly believe it will).

Maybe there is a hidden message with such a pandemic. Maybe God is trying to tell us something. Maybe God is telling us to focus on what is so important. Unity. Love. Happiness.