#istayhome : is this a blessing in disguise?

In these days it’s hard to talk about anything else but this situation with the virus we find ourselves in. One can see this situation from many prospectives. One can feel panic, feel annoyance, feel sorry for oneself stuck in the house.. or can see it as an opportunity!

And this is where I want to take you. 
I need to thank my friend Mohammed for the inspiration all of the way from Kuwait (the power of technology.. and the realisation that we are really ALL in this mess!) : ‘our generation has always been through more stress and more demanding life than others. This situation has made the stress factor stop for a while. Education, finding a job, family problems, the economy… it’s all ‘in pause’ for now. No stressors’. 
There I was. Gobsmacked in front of these simple yet powerful words.
There I was, complaining about the fact that I ‘had to stay home and do less than the usual’ when actually I should have just thought ‘finally I get to breathe’.


Who else has (had) a million miles an hour life? 
Isn’t it good to stop and re-prioritise a bit?


So here is some good practices to do while ‘stuck’ at home: 

1. Sit down and prioritise your life. Do you want anything to be different? This is the time to visualise what kind of different person you might want to be, visualise your dream. There is actual time now to think. Let’s use it! See if there are any steps that can be done right now and what needs to be postponed for later. 
2. Meditate and let go. Maybe all it’s needed is some letting go. There are plenty of free meditation apps and tools. I am still not good at the whole sitting down and just breathe, and find that guided meditations are a little easier.. using this time for some introspection can be a very ‘useful’ use 
3. Appreciate family time. Yes, if you are stuck in the house with them it may be that you get on each other’s nerves, but.. try not to! (different rooms to work in might just be the solution). If the family is far away, make sure to stay in contact. It’s hard to be without human contact, and this whole ‘one meter from the next person’ means no hand shakes or hugs are allowed and, well, it can be extremely isolating. But the next social thing we have is the voice, so let’s use it! Pick up the phone instead of writing that w-app message!
4. Catch up on some reading. Reading can teach us a lot about how to deal with these ‘surreal’ scenarios. Nothing can be better than immersing in a novel about some past epidemics (like Blindness by Jose Saramago, or The Plague by Albert Camus). Literature teaches, and literature helps coping.
5. Pick up that hobby you left behind. Appreciate doing something just because you like it. And just think of how lucky you are to be able to wait the end of this out from the comfort of your home, where you can hit play on a spotify playlist and dance free, like none is watching (cause yes, none is…)