You are the problem and the solution. COVID Lessons
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Never has a quote popped in my head as many times like this one by Blaise Pascal during the ongoing COVID crisis. Indeed this is the reason why most of us struggled to adapt to life under quarantine. We dread nothingness so much that we’d rather hurt ourselves than do nothing. It took away our many aimless distractions and left us to deal with all the things that scare us: boredom, silence, and ourselves.
Over the last few weeks, we have all adapted in our ways. Of course, none of us have mastered the ability to sit quietly in a room alone. While that would be the ideal remedy for our troubles, we seem woefully incapable of doing that which comes naturally to most beings on this planet. Just glance over at your cat or dog.
Perhaps we are incapable because this inability is our ability. It is simultaneously our salvation and damnation. Among all the traits that separate us from the other beings, it is one of the more interesting ones. This fire, this desire, and restlessness to do something, anything. It is a source of human creativity, art, literature, and science. It has us carving statues, painting churches, and building spaceships to soar the heavens above. This internal tension drives and defines us human beings.
“Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are ultimately to be at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be.” — Abraham Maslow
Those of us fortunate enough to have homes and incomes to sustain ourselves have stayed put at home. We have isolated ourselves from a world that, ironically enough, struggles to breathe despite the cleanest air in decades. By doing so, most of us have been able to save ourselves from the virus but not from ourselves.
When you are confined to a small place for an indefinite time, there are few things you have to face: a glut of time, a deluge of boredom, and yourself. At the same time, you don’t have access to one of your most formidable weapon of choice: the world with its myriad distractions. From my experience, two contrasting strategies have been adopted in this fight against boredom, time, and mind.
One faction has stuck to the time-tested method of mindless indulgence and instant gratification. That would explain the gluttony, the sloth, the greed, and the lust. That would explain the food porn, the Netflix benders, the warped sleeping schedules, and the drug binges.
The others have taken up the weapons of delayed gains and mindful action. That would explain the discipline, the moderation, the vigor, and the austerity. It would explain the skill-building courses, the healthy diets, the knowledge binges, and the scheduled sleeping.
One group has become stagnant, rotting into a cesspool of wasted potential. Losing their bright exuberance, they turn into a shadow that further strays from its former self. A bird that is initially unwilling and eventually incapable of leaving a cage that it doesn’t know exists but one that it created.
The other active and flowing, a gushing river overflowing with possibilities. Gleaming with lustrous vivacity, inching ever closer to their true self. A bird that soars ever higher, its eyes set firmly on the horizon; refusing to look down, let alone return to the ground.
One reason for the divergence in these war strategies is the lack of another critical weapon in our arsenal that we all love to use and love to deny using: our excuses. We like to believe that our excuses hold us back. That if it weren’t for them, we would do and be so much more than we are at the moment. The lockdown has stripped us of most of our excuses, so what continues to shackle some of us?
Granted, some of the excuses, the worldly obligations, genuinely tie us down. Some of us don’t have the luxury to choose what we can do at all times. Some still find a way. Think of those who work two jobs a day and yet manage to paint the night away. If they can with all their “excuses”, why do you still not lead the life you desire? Why do you still not work towards the person you aspire(to be)? Why are you still not building that body, designing that game, writing that novel, or learning that dusty and rusty guitar?
“The trouble with excuses is that they become inevitably difficult to believe after they’ve been used a couple of times.” ―Scott Spencer
It seems our excuses weren’t holding us back, they were holding most of us in place. They weren’t preventing us from taking action, they were instigating us to act. The commitments and responsibilities were the sole reason some of us were even getting out of bed into which we have embedded ourselves lately.
Consider for a moment the front-line warriors. Or those who no longer have incomes, jobs, and homes. They are forced into action. They are struggling to survive but at the end of it, those who do survive will thrive. Whereas those of us who have no struggle will, ironically, stagnate and wither.
What continues to hold you back is staring at you in the mirror. You weaved narratives around your excuses to prove to others why you are all that you shouldn’t be and why you couldn’t be all that you should. At some point in time, you mistook the fiction you fabricated for a fact. You fell into your web of lies and you stayed put because even though you were trapped, you were comfortable.
Those who have peered behind the few excuses that remain standing during COVID have found them to be nothing but a facade. They have undertaken the arduous task of tearing them down and building a better version of themselves from the scraps. Those who have not bothered have fallen further down the rabbit hole of instant gratification. Then there are those, who have looked behind, and chosen instead to build elaborate excuse edifices and intricate web of fiction and lies.
Of course, things are not always going to remain like this. Like everything else, this too shall pass. The world will come back to life, gradually then ever before but it will without a doubt. That’s the thing about life, it never gives up, it always persists. It knows nothing of death, it knows only to keep on going, keep on living. We will have access, once again, to our limitless arsenal of excuses and distractions. At that time you would do well to remember that life is nothing but a marvelous chaotic hotchpotch of distractions. Some more worthwhile than others. All excuses are distractions but not all distractions are excuses. When the air clears what will you choose this time around, distractions, or excuses?
