HAVE WE LEARNT ANYTHING AT ALL?

 

HAVE WE LEARNT ANYTHING AT ALL?

We are all still living in the uncertainty of the pandemic. The waves are lashing on to the shores, one after the other, bringing with them untold horror, disease, death and endless tragedies. Every family has at least one sad tale to tell, one big scare and a punch in the face that have thrown the economic wheels of the family into disarray, puncturing the routine with holes that will take years to close.

The last fifteen months have kept all of us away from our normal lives and routine. The new normal concept, unacceptable at the beginning, has now got firmly rooted in our day, night and heart. Social gatherings, get-togethers, parties, engagements and weddings, road-side meets, coffee dates and general loitering have become a thing of the past. As the pandemic settled down in our vicinity, life began taking weird turns and twists. The inability of medical science, virologists and the statisticians working on algorithms to understand what was happening gave the pandemic a good head start and the world reeled under it.

All that we knew was each person, big or small, male or female, adult or child, was a pariah. Anybody and everybody could bring you the killer disease or be killed himself. Anybody, even you, could change your body forever or end the only life you have. The power of the virus was to each one, to destroy or get destroyed which isolated each one into his or her own bubble. We lost trust over our own hands as much as we feared the hands of our loved ones. Hand-shakes, hugs and physical expressions became expressions of fear and we reeled in horror if someone even attempted to. 

Social distancing came home to roost and our homes became isolated dens as each one took shelter in his own world, staying physically away from the other. The interactions shifted to mobile phones, zoom apps and other social media. As the disease raged on, as our mind and thoughts got trapped in the fear of death and disease, our enthusiasm waned, gloominess took over and we collectively retreated in our shells, far away from the people we loved, depended on, laughed and cried with, didn’t care about or even hated.

I remember a radio channel had started a campaign imploring us to make that phone call to the one whom we had broken up with or hurt or had negativity about. It was to make one realize the importance of forgiving and moving on in these uncertain times. I wonder how many of us had the courage to pick that phone and make that call!

.As days passed, the pandemic took a brutal turn. It was like being alive for that moment and that moment alone! The truth and inevitability of our mortality was never starker than this. Nobody could predict the future as the present became dangerously volatile. 

Faced with this ultimate truth, I wonder then, did we pause and reflect on all the happy and sad moments and the people who made it. Did we look at the broken relationships and the broken hearts lying on the way where we were now. Did we remember forgotten bonds, lost friendships and tattered strings of attachments as we struggled to find sanity in the insane pandemic.

Did we not think of repairing what lay broken in these highly unpredictable time. Did we not want to empty our hearts of all the negativity we had collected over the years. Pushed to a corner, did we not think of this opportunity life had presented to us to rise above pettiness that characterizes human nature.

Here was the opportunity to undo what had inadvertently happened or even deliberately, here was the time to heal, here was the time to forgive, forget or ask for forgivance, the time to unburden our heart. Here was the time to rise above our clay feet, to evolve and make peace with ourselves and those who had threatened or actually derailed our peace. The unpredictability of tomorrow would make our today that much stronger and allow us find the medicine to relieve us of that nagging pain, that scratch on the heart or that hatred that had hurt us more than the person to whom it was directed.

In spite of the precarious situation we were in, as infallible humans, I think we did not overcome this huge challenge to our heart. We did not summon the guts needed to forgive someone who had hurt us and we did not move on. Our hearts continued to be filled with the weight all the negativity we had been carrying for so many years.

Even as we faced the unseen dangerous enemy, the courage to grow out of pettiness never came to us. The strength to rise above ourselves and expand our heart to be large enough to tame our ego was never summoned. The fear was there but the threat of dying by the disease seemed empty to all. It was for someone else, in some other place, and we would be spared.

I wonder then, what has the pandemic really taught us. It has brought home the truths about austerity, materialism- a failed concept, work from anywhere but your office, health is wealth, money matters don’t matter that much, vacations and luxuries can wait, life in a bubble and my small circle of loved ones! But it didn’t really teach us to grow above ourselves spiritually and philosophically into that realm where we can find peace and true happiness by lightening our hearts and conquering our egos.

We continue to remain humans and not evolved humans, even in the face of annihilation by disease.

Pandemic has much to teach, but have we learnt anything at all?

Find out your own answers, change if not yet changed, make that call, heal that scratch on the heart and hold on to that elusive peace of mind.

Dr. Reina Khadilkar