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Confinement is a new experience for most of us. It gives us a chance to re-examine our lives both personally and collectively while staying smart and staying safe.
The playing field for confinement is unequal. Some people are holed up in large spacious houses with ample personal space, others are crowded into tiny apartments, shantytowns or refugee camps. Some can work more or less as normal at home, while others may face the loss of their incomes. Some of us are healthy, while others will be concerned about their health. We are all equal before the virus. The need to stay calm and organized is the same for everyone.
It’s a time when mental strength is important. None of us is alone in this and it’s crucial not to wrongly define ourselves as being alone. We are simply briefly disconnected from in person social interaction. That’s not an end to social interaction in itself: it is a reshaping of our behavioural system and values.
This health crisis calls into question our whole model. It questions our personal way of life and our political, diplomatic and economic models. The first response is often inaction before awareness and then action.
Here are five important points to remember to stay constructive in time of confinement:
1. Stay confident
Reading all the latest COVID horror stories will not help anyone. You don’t need to constantly check the number of coronavirus cases in every country in the world. The constant news cycle, even if necessary, may harm our own self confidence and collective morale. Throughout history, humanity has faced many crises and it is through crisis that progress comes. The human being is resilient.
2. Stay connected
Call or message family and friends, stay in touch with colleagues and connections. For couples and families, making sure that meals are eaten together helps maintain structure. Since the digital era started, we never enjoyed the connectedness brought by social media so much. We have the chance to have access not only to news but also to stay connected to our relatives or to digitalise our business activity. We can maintain a minimum reasonable life while having the chance to use social media wisely. There’s a wave of connectedness and compassion spreading across the world.
3. Stay active
Now is a good time to consider stopping smoking, and starting yoga, pilates, meditation, or the study of a new language: for all of these, there are many free online resources for beginners available. And that piece of DIY that you keep putting off, the novel you were always going to write? The time has finally come. Staying hydrated by regularly drinking water helps us to keep calm. Daily physical exercise, whether done inside or outside, gives a focal point for our new routine.
Routine is key: define one, stick to it and improve it over time. Get up and go to bed at the same times as you normally would. Stay healthy. The crisis will end, and when that comes we will need you for the reconstruction phase.
4. Stay safe
The restrictions are very difficult to live with but they are the only protection we have. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that coronavirus kills only the old or the sick: it can be lethal for people of any age who were in good health. It is important to respect the instructions of governments who are doing their best to protect us and have advice from the best researchers in the world. Don’t fall into conspiracy theory: our governments are doing their best, for our health, our good and our future. We shall trust them and more than that, help them by staying safe and responsible.
5. Stay smart
Many of the temptations of everyday life have now disappeared. The opportunity, therefore, is to re-focus on the essential. The mood swings associated with alcohol are probably best avoided for the time being. We need to think collectively. Renovating our lifestyle and reshaping our behaviours is the best thing to do. It’s a good time to revisit our models and codes of conduct. This contributes to the general effort of the nation. We are all one.
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One of the problems of our normal frenetic, but often unproductive, lives is that when we try something new, we look for results too early. Usually there are no positive results straight away, so we are often tempted to conclude that we are wasting our time. So we give up – meaning that we have indeed been wasting our time.
Rather than looking for instant results, what we should have been doing is concentrating on improving our learning processes. Now is the chance to break from the wasteful cycle, for all current and future projects. If you are a beginner, you are not going to be much good at Russian or writing fiction or yoga after a couple of months. That doesn’t matter. Tomorrow is not going to be much different from today, but we now have the chance to lay down for ourselves processes of learning which, if we stick to them once this is over, will in the end bear fruit.
Once confinement ends, we will never be the same again. Use you time to think about how you could be different. How we and our world can be different. How do we want the future of our world to look like? Now is our chance to define a clearer, more focused and more balanced path for our future lives, both individually and as societies.
