Self isolation or Self awareness????

The past few days have been interesting. If I were to say that I have self isolated myself for the past few days and that is what I describe as interesting, I am sure people would have a lot of questions. But indeed yes, these few days have been very very important to me and for me.

My father tested positive (do I need to say for what?) and he had to be admitted to the hospital and because I went to help him out, I had to self isolate. I had no idea how I was going to do it. I knew myself as someone who is always on the go, thrives on the company of people, talks a lot and enjoys the hustle and bustle of life. A disclaimer I’d like to make here is I was definitely not in complete isolation, I did make appearances in the living room and also sat for some time there but by and large I was in a room that had been prepared for my self -isolation. But for a “social animal” like me, this would have never been deemed easy by anyone including myself.

Necessity is the mother of invention and I realised necessity is also the mother of self discovery at times. These few days have been days when I have had the most intimate conversations with me. Something I do in scattered ways almost everyday. I always have been “habituated” to reflect but these few days I actually reflected!

For once I was indeed calm in spite of the issues I was facing with calls from my mother and sister and remotely coordinating a lot of things at the hospital. The body and the mind took it easy and I got to rest. Rest not just my body but my mind as well. I was away from all the discussions about COVID and also about how the government is ineffective. I basked in ignorance and “newslessness” and it felt good! I did of course keep myself updated with what I wanted to keep myself updated with and obviously was clutter free.

I realised what is meant by being privileged. We keep saying a lot of things but when we experience it first hand we understand what others in the world are going through who may not be as privileged as we are. I understood why I am privileged. And what am I doing with this privileged life, adding on to becoming more privileged or misusing all the privileges I have? Every time I have reflected I have always thought about how I can improve myself as a facilitator or what went wrong and how can I change things and so on and so forth. But this time the reflection was about what do I have that others don’t, how do I take a lot of things for granted and how insensitive I have been in many scenarios.

Many a times I have made insensitive statements when I hear someone old getting unwell and people running helter skelter to save the life. These few days helped me understand that no matter how old someone gets, life is valuable. I also on the other hand realized that life indeed is unpredictable and things can get completely out of our control. As my son always has told me, “Never make statements without giving enough thought to what you are saying and how it actually can impact people.” These few days have made me keep myself quiet and pull my rein on a lot of things I’ve wanted to blurt out. Yes, I am now conscious of what I say.

I also realized that for me, fewer interactions with people helps to keep me calm and also take decisions with a lot more thought and respond in a composed way. Reactions have been fewer and responses have been stronger. Is this because of the people or because of me? I do not think this investigation really is needed. I know now that keeping myself away from people for some time helps me think better and respond consciously and with presence of mind. And the most important highlight is that I have been able to control anger! Control the urge to shout at people when not needed, explain my point of view without getting agitated and also be more assertive when needed.

We tend to in many ways cripple our old parents by overprotecting them. So all these years as a teacher I have always told parents not to be helicopter parents and overprotect children. I have the same thought for daughters and sons who do everything for their parents thinking they are old and it is natural that they will need help every step of their way. This is not true. They need us to only support them, empower them, help them realise their limitations physically and mentally and work around those. Most importantly let them ask for help, empower them to do that. Let them know there are still things they can do by themselves and they are still very much capable of learning new things. I found my father in this very situation last few days. I had got him a smart phone to replace his old button phone not to make him feel smart but to help him experience the features like listening to the old Hindi film songs he has always loved, making video calls with his sisters, to name a few. But he kept it unused or sparingly used and continued to use the button phone only because he believed that he could not learn to use the smart phone in spite of being shown the process many times. He was afraid of failing to use it. And I think we also gave up too soon. When he went to the hospital, he took both the phones and continued to use the buttoned phone. Two days back the buttoned phone broke and I decided this was the time for him to become “smart” and use his smart phone. It has been two days and he has learnt all by himself how to not only receive calls but also make calls and check WhatsApp messages and change the status (this was done involuntarily though). He figured it out! The biggest lesson for me came from this experience and also from many instances of how we have made him absolutely crippled without us. My sister lives with him and this, I hope, is a lesson for her too.

One important aspect of my own self I came in touch with was my whole involvement with people. I have been made to believe that I can live only if I have company. I am not sure if it is true or not and I do not want to even investigate on that. I know now that I do enjoy solitude and will need more of it in coming years as I have discovered its benefits.

The best thing about being isolated is that I do not have to wear a mask. When I say mask, I do not just mean the face mask prescribed to save one self from the virus but the mask we all wear to look a certain way, appear a certain way in front of the world including our closest ones. I realised I wear a mask in front of the people who are closest to me physically and perhaps supposed to be in every way. I am guarded, manipulative and misrepresentative of myself. I need to graduate to removing my mask in their presence or be comfortable wearing it. Which way I go, time will decide and of course my conscious manoeuvring of my behaviour, attitude and response.

Quite surprisingly though, I did not listen to music these few days I self isolated. I binged on movies…movies that I had wanted to watch but did not for whatever reason. Each movie was watched in quiet and deep engagement. I did abort a few within a few minutes. A Bengali film called Sweater and La La Land — two movies I connected to the most.

So in a nutshell, these few days of isolation helped me get in touch with myself and the world not just around me but beyond me. I learnt a lot and am definitely wiser, clearer and calmer… much more aware of myself and my real self!