Hey, I hope everyone is ok and staying safe.
I'm trying to find positives in a situation we’re facing, which is both challenging and difficult.
Less ego, more empathy
What this situation has explicitly exposed is both empathy and ego. As Sadhguru (2014) said; there are ‘human beings’ and ‘human creatures’. Human beings just ‘be’ and are humble with themselves and care for others, ‘human creatures’ on the other hand, act like or in some cases behave worse than animals. We have witnessed in the last few weeks some great displays of care of empathy, for instance; practising social distancing when it was Mothers Day in the UK, or when I witnessed a few weeks ago that a random woman in front of me at a supermarket decided to buy all the groceries for an elderly lady. However, there has been some shitty behaviour from human creatures that is dictated by their ego, for instance some smaller shops exploiting prices on products, certain people hoarding food and the absurdity of panic buying, certain people still physically socialising, and the list goes on and on. Although, it’s important to remember that principles and morals are Man-made, human instinct and ego isn’t. Our society has become flooded with self-centred behaviour and the self-entitlement of me, me, me and greed. This has always existed, but nowadays, it is more visually obvious. When people act in ignorance, they unfortunately suffer. The ignorance of those who avoid social distancing ultimately could hurt themselves or those around them. We can blame many things such as, Capitalism, the government, celebrities and social media, but I think we need to be more responsible for our own actions and try to be aware of it more. So, this situation will hopefully make people realise and re-evaluate life and ‘being,’ and hopefully the ego will be suppressed after this.
Be the best friend to yourself
These are anxious times, but the most important thing is to the best friend to yourself. This has given me more time to make art, read and study. A couple of weeks ago, I was starting to feel anxious, but now I’m doing more of my own stuff, I feel better for it. Take this moment to enjoy your own company and do the things you love doing that involves being inside. The world outside is beyond our control, but we are in control of our mental state.
Fear weakens the immune system
There’s also a lot of hysterical pollution in the media, consisting of the bombardment of news updates, fake news and misinformation, and self-appointed experts on social media. Fear weakens the immune system. If we allow fear to manifest itself and dominate our mindset by being updated every 2 minutes with updates, then we will make ourselves ill. I'm not saying be ignorant to what’s going on, we should all take precautions, but edit and limit the noise from the media. I know this because I was doing the exact same when this started to dominate the media, and feel awful, but now I'm doing my best to limit what I see, and concentrate in what I love.
Take care and stay safe