Different times… difficult terrain and a defiant adversary…. It’s time to toughen up and get ready for a face off, more with the fear inside than the virus. What you choose from these timeless insights will decide where you will be a year from now.

The world is no longer the same. A new normal has kicked in. Prologue to pandemic has faded and has left us bewildered and clueless .Rough patch lies ahead, we all know that. Best we can do is to survive through the remaining chapters.

As we live out a different life each day, we struggle to catch up with the answers to so many things.… unsure and  hapless.

I had hung my boots a year ago. It took me a while before  I could decide to set about rediscovering my life, learn about so many things, discover how to be creative and productive, be useful, self manage and to be mindful of all that that happens around us. Something I had missed so badly through all those years.  You would say I rather aimed to redesign my life .

Today, it all seems irrelevant. A brisk morning walk has turned into a  masked  attempt to stay  fit. Social distancing has marred relationships. Virus behaving disruptively, certainly not good enough to get us  through the pandemic.  Empathy burns low.

It is impossible to have a  marquee system of sorts to get you through the crisis.  Possibly, for this reason alone I find it helpful to hang on to a few thoughts of my own in moments of doubt. Of course I don’t expect them to solve my problems, but at least they remind me that not everything is  lost on me. They save my day by the changing the course of my thoughts even if just a little.

I have  found comfort in these ageless insights, these words of wisdom that I hope could  bring some relief  to you too. They may change the way you understand the  things happening around  you. Maybe make you take a turn for good even if just a little!

Don’t be afraid:  You are never alone

To be alone is scary enough. But to be alone in isolation even if it is home, sounds all the more frightening. Loneliness eats into your senses. A prolonged one and it will invade your sanity and leave you a mental wreck. The price of being in emotional darkness for too long is too high.

But then there are possible ways how you could view your physical seclusion. Truth is you are never alone. If you believe in God, you have all the reason to experience the ‘divinity’, if you don’t, well!!… You still have your best friend in you. Who is there to stop you from helping yourself with unconditional self compassion? Besides there is no one to take away your cell phone, Face book, Twitter, Zoom or Google.

Of course it lacks intimacy, nothing like the one you experience meeting others face to face. But it all is enough to remind you that you are not alone. Whatever you do just don’t miss the happiness of your own company and rejoice the moment you live in.

Stop worrying for what you could not control

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”—Vivian Greene.

In our everyday life some of us have that passionate urge to resist the truth and turn ourselves into control freaks. We often   refuse to delegate and   live with the idea that if we  can have some sort of control over  other people and situations, we could  well prevent bad things from happening.

But brutal truth  is so different. You just cannot have control over so many things happening in life. A storm may surge in, a high tide may flood your living room but you can do nothing about it except hold on to your precious self to be safe.

The virus invaded us uninvited and that’s the reality. It left us with no choice but to accept that there is only so much we can control and no more. Not much you can do about it here I would say, except to turn to the wisdom of those who survived in extreme situations and later thrived. So many lived through the Holocaust and managed to find happiness later on. Think of how these people thought and behaved and turned up wonderfully alive and happy.

When you cannot change the world around you to your liking, adjust yourself. It’s the only way forward. Deep within you rests happiness. All you need to do is to reach out for it even if for a few moments, each day.

Don’t waste yourself by indulging in blame game

“Be the energy you want to attract”-Dustin W.Stout

Many of us are truly upset about the way things are being handled in pandemic times. Governments are getting cornered for not being serious enough in their efforts. Pent up emotions by the twitterati endlessly slam and mock them leaving little room for things that matter.

A few of us find a hint of humor in this but focusing too much does not help much anyway. Stay connected to this thread and you are wasting your energies like anything, so precious now to be frittered away uselessly. Instead, think of the way to improve. There are so many better things waiting to happen. Ride the change by focusing on what you do and what you can do and not how others have failed in accomplishing things.

It’s futile. You just cannot change people by attacking them or ridiculing them for what they didn’t do or did so little. Rather lead by an example. Play your part in keeping everybody safe and don’t forget; tough times do not last forever but what you do always do.

This could be your moment to change possibility into opportunity.

Life was so wonderful before it all began  and when it happened, like everybody else I also focused on all that that we had  lost and what more we could lose.

I had moved to this city almost a year before the lock down. I was beginning to find my place in the neighborhood. Local community was warm and friendly. I had started to revel being free. An amazing new life was just taking shape.

Then, the virus took it away.

I wonder and ask myself   what this pandemic has disabled us from doing. Few would argue that it changed the way the life flourished for us. Yet a few would claim a new world order has begun to take shape where life as we knew would never be the same.

Damn dismaying thought. But what the flip side of the focus says? What if we start looking for possibilities that the crisis has brought in its wake? Difficult to say what are those for you, because situation is different for each one of us. But of one thing I am damn sure. There are more possibilities in each moment than you realize. All you need to do is to look for them and grab them. Everything else will fall in place by itself. Believe me, the goodness of change will be worth it. Tough times never last forever.  Now is the time to hang on to the opportunities in this crisis driven weakness of sorts.

Nature has its own way of changing things

“You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.” – Golda Meir

The change is happening around us in a big way, rather too big to make any sense out of it. We were never prepared for anything like this and nobody knows how things will take shape in future; what will be the ‘New World’ like in few months from now. Will we able to plan our summer holidays like before? What about kids, parents, evening with friends, the changing neighborhood?

I reckon its time not to comprehend things but rather ride the change. Time to live life one day at a time with hope, for hope is the only thing left now to lean on. One that  is not just a wishful thinking, one that is so  easy to happen of its own though it glimmers more in troubled times. It comes with an array of active choices too. Choice of actions, beliefs and attitudes, one that could give you the best shot to sail you through all this madness, a little less scattered, a little less hurt.

None of us has the slightest clue to what kind of world will survive the virus. Even the most knowledgeable are at a loss. So stop trying to comprehend it all and allow yourself to surf the wave. Don’t hold expectations for what happens tomorrow. Just live the change. Let go of the control for once. It could be scary but remember, you just cannot plan your way into tomorrow. It’s better to surrender to change, pay attention to what’s happening around you and learn.

The lessons from today shall serve you well tomorrow.

 Like all bad times this crisis will not last long

Whenever we find ourselves in the middle of a crisis, we tend to forget that like difficult times it will not last forever and fixate on how it has harmed us. We forget that everything that has a beginning has an end also. Every feeling, thought, sensation begins with an end in sight. Nothing is permanent. No matter how bad things are, they are not going to be with you always and will end somehow at some point.

So, whenever you feel helpless or worse still hopeless just think of this single thought and see amazing things begin to happen. More so, it will keep you going a long way for there is always a chance that tomorrow could be a wonderful day.

It’s time to get tough, for our future is now trapped into an endless algorithm of ifs and buts. You may find these uncertain times as a reason to worry or consider it prudent to jump into an infinite pool of possibilities. Choice is all yours. So, choose wisely.

Who knows one day one of them may become your reality.