Lessons learnt in the time of Coronavirus(COVID 19)

This is an unusual time. None of the problems that I have learnt to stress about exists today. Yet, I am stressed like I have never been before. None of the tricks I know about keeping calm is working.

It has been a repeating theme in many of the motivational books I (try to) read that

whenever nothing makes sense we should go back to the basics.

What do you do when inspite of practicing hard, inspite of using all the correct strategies you lose the fight?

You practice more.

Practice day in and day out.

Practice everyday as if it is today’s effort decides the fate of the world.

In short you go back to the basics, do it over and over again until it becomes muscle memory. That is how you become great at something. #Lecturingisfreedoingisnot

The reverse is also true. If you do not practice what you are great at, over time you will lose touch and eventually might become like someone like who has never practiced your craft at all.

Starting to wonder why you need to listen to a nobody on how to be great?

Bear with me, for by the end of this article, I hope to make it clear that we are all equal, in the point of view, this article came out of.

Over thousands of years we human beings have evolved to be great at one thing, and one thing only.

No, I am not talking of trolling.

I am talking about surviving.

For many years in the start of the human story, we had only one goal, to survive.

From dangerous animals,

from natural calamities,

from hunger,

from unknown diseases etc.

Everyone had a single goal and we did well.

We evolved to become great long distance runners,

we started taking shelter in caves and started building some of our own.

We moved out of the hunter/gatherer phase and started agriculture.

As we evolved,

we developed some immunity and also learnt the medicinal quality of some plants.

Things were not perfect but we were moving forward.

Ok. I get it.

This is becoming too long and too boring.

By now you must be like:

Bear with me a little longer.

Then things got a little more complicated.

We invented religion, politics and war.

Now had to learn to survive from each other. Remember the crusades, the world wars and the cold war.

It was not all gloomy. We did some good things along the way.

We had

the Renaissance movement,

the industrial age.

We learnt to fly

and

then to ban people from flying. #IstandbyyouKunalKamra

We created the telephone and the internet.

Oh, the internet!!!

Then we ushered in an era of relative prosperity.

Then we got all hyped about convenience.

Lets talk a little about convenience

This is how convenience works.

First

we bought a car,

then because the traffic was crazy --> we hired a driver

and then

we ditched both the car and the driver and hired them as a complete package on demand (Ola/Uber/Lyft).

Ok, another example.

First

we had the apple,

then we were thrown out and had to hunt,

then we started growing crops and cooking them and eating that.

Then we outsourced growing crops to a group called farmers

and

cooking to a group called cooks.

Just kept the eating to ourselves.

Then just because buying the food from farmers and hiring a cook was too much work –> we invented something called restaurants.

Then it was all good untill it became tiring.

By now you should be able to see the flaw in the restaurant system.

Yes, we had to dress up and go to the restaurants.

Too much work.

Then we made an app to do all these(Swiggy/Zomato/UberEats)

• Restaurants take crops from farmers
• Cooks please cook
• Tell some other dudes to tell the cooks to hurry up and then bring the food to us.

So that when all this was happenning

we could stress about why our Insta post was not getting too much attention from people who we barely know.

Do not misunderstand me.

I am all for technology and automation and convenience.

It is my line of work to enable these things and make them smoother.

I have been an employee(Devops Engineer) at both Ola and Swiggy and also have been an loyal customer to both these services.

I also love social media and I might as well call myself a social media addict.

This post is also not about me lecturing about how we have become complacent or some kind of moral policing or about how we are moving away from the path of God.

This post is about me realizing how me, my family, friends and the human race as a whole has forgotten, in this world of convenience and dopamine addiction, the one basic thing that we had fought so hard to perfect.

Survival Instincts.

I feel the reason we forgot about our indomitable urge to survive , as I had mentioned at the start, is lack of practice.

You say, we have not.

If we had not forgotten,

Why is it becoming so hard to keep people at home during the time of this grave pandemic?

Why is it so hard to understand that if you die from the infection, the virus (COVID 19) is causing, then all the arguements about whose god is greater, whose political party is doing less harm, whose whatsapp meme is funnier becomes pointless?

Why is it so hard to understand that even if one does not die from this infection a lot of people will from the poverty that comes after this because of the economic crash that will come, if we allow this infection to spread?

Why is it so hard to understand, that even if we are the select few that do not face poverty when this all dies down, we still have to forgo many of the luxuries that we had toiled day and night to perfect?

Friends,

• This is not the time to agrue about how people from one religion/age group/country is immune to this virus.
• This not the time to spread misinformation or propaganda.
• This not the time to go clubbing or a stroll in the park just to take in the fresh air.

For you information the air is not fresh.

It is better to assume that it is filled with the virus and it is out there to kill us and all that we hold dear and become alert now than the opposite where we all (die)/(get infected) while being carefree.

Even though I am trying not to sound like a shitty Hollywood movie. I need to say this.

This is the time when we, as a species, take a stand and fight for our survival.

It is time to prove once again why we are better than all the species that went extinct.

Note: There is almost no chance this virus will make us extinct but better safe than sorry.

The virus is challenging us with just some simple rules for survival.

• Stay home. Practice Social Distancing.
• Wash your hands often.
• If you are infected, seek help. Do not run away.
• Seek information from reliable sources. Do not spread misinformation.

This is a fight for survival and a fight to the end.

I hope that this Coronavirus crisis brings out the best in us and we overcome it with as little damage as possible.

I also hope that this teaches us a lesson, that in the future, whenever there is a crisis we waste no time in putting our differences behind and fighting it together.

And last but not the least, for those like me, who like to ponder over things like

• how this is so unfair
• Why us?
• Why now?

Here is a conversation from LOTR that my loving wife so aptly reminded me in a time when I was feeling very low.

     Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.

     Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't
          even be here.  But we are. It's like in the
     great stories, Mr. Frodo.  The ones that really
     mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were.
     And sometimes you didn't want to know the end.
     Because how could the end be happy? How could the world
     go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?
     But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow.
     Even darkness must pass.  A new day will come.
     And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
     Those were the stories that stayed with you.
     That meant something, even if you were too small to
     understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand.
     I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of
     turning back, only they didn't.
     They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

     Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

     Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo...
          and it's worth fighting for.

Enough for the day. Stay indoors. Stay safe. And even if you are alone in your house, do not despair, do the right thing and always remember we are in this together.

Bye. Have a great day.