Stuck in Time

India went on a complete lockdown on March 25, 2020 to enable social distancing and fight the Covid-19 pandemic. It has been 18 full days since then and life isn’t the same anymore. Yesterday the honourable Prime Minister of India made it official that the lockdown will be extended for another 14 days. A sadistic optimist in me says that I am not alone – we are not alone. It’s a battle that the entire world is fighting. None of us really know when this will end and how. As we are ethically stocking up essential commodities and morally abiding to the country laws, there are other concerns too. How are the under-privileged people managing their lives? Is the World ready to curtail this pandemic? How are we going to manage the economic crisis that will befall? For me, most important question is: how are we managing our emotional well-being?

Although Stephen Hawking has scientifically proved that time-travel into the future is not possible, our minds are that of a time-traveller’s. It always weaves hundreds of dreams and plans about the future. It constantly rewinds the past, tries to identify patterns, make us feel guilty or regret our own actions. Very rarely it pulls the shelf loaded with the memories of good times, moments where we felt proud or truly happy. Needless to say, it never stays in the present either. In short, our mind is the time-traveller’s vehicle and we are THE time-travellers.

And here we are, as time-travellers stuck somewhere in the familiarity of the past although we wanted to venture into the unknown future. All of us want to own our future. We want to design and control it as if it is a computer program. Our future is not in our hands although we are trained to believe so. It is just an illusion – this future, I mean. Therefore, we live in constant dread and feel depressed due to the sheer helplessness which we are currently experiencing. All of us feel that we are stuck in time – as if the time has frozen. What we don’t realise that it is only a myth. It is absurd to believe so. In the process, we are losing out on our dear present.

What do we have in present? Well, if you are reading this post (I know that very few would – but that’s because I am not an internationally celebrated writer or a well-known blogger), you are blessed. You not only have a roof over your head, but also the luxury of literacy and of course, internet! However, we still complain. As if we would have conquered the world if we weren’t locked down. As if all the plans would have surfaced into reality if we weren’t quarantined. This is the silliness of our mind – which as I said is only a foolish time traveller. It believes that it could leap into future, but it ends up in the past thereby neglecting our present!

While we stay at home for few more weeks, lets try to make our foolish minds wise. Let’s try to educate it that past is past – it can’t be altered. It is like a file in a hard drive which is lost forever. No matter how much we try, it can never be found, and the data can never be restored. So, lets us accept this fact and move on – rather should I say stay? More precisely, stay present in the present?

To cut the long story short, let’s not let our mind wander like a time-traveller's. Let’s not let it abandon the present. Let’s watch our thoughts and what the mind has to say. Let’s be empathetic to the mind because we are the only audience to the thoughts orchestrated by our mind – both perfectly rehearsed ones and the messy ones. Let’s be listen to ourselves. Let the time tell, for we are not stuck in time because time never stop to tick by!

Happy quarantine people.

Take care of your mind.

Trust me, heart will follow you happily like a cute puppy.