The world has come to a standstill. All plans, put on hold. Friendships turned virtual. Social media becoming our safe haven.

We all went through a moment of introspection when the announcement came around and we all knew  “Now we’ll have more time alone with our thoughts.” Turns out we didn’t really have that many thoughts to begin with. So instead, we’ve all been trying to keep ourselves occupied. Cooking up new inventions with food, creating challenges on social media, being relentlessly judgmental about what people post online (although that part was true even before the lockdown.)

“No one knows when it will end, or whether this virus will go away anytime soon. And that feeling of uncertainty is what terrifies us. So we turn to the online world.”

But the real challenge has been trying to maintain our sanity. We are social animals. Even those that pride themselves on being ‘introverts’ have been finding it difficult to remain positive. At times, things were not only about virus but cyclones, earthquakes and other natural calamities.

All this really makes you think. Why are we really hating staying at home so much? Maybe it’s the concept of feeling trapped because for most of us, we hardly stepped out. Or maybe it’s the fact that our families, as much as we may love them, are testing individuals. None of us want to admit it. But the reality is that once you leave the nest, you realize that your world can not just start and end with your family. It is for that reason that we find a shelter of safety in the outside world.

The truth is that this lockdown is scary. For everyone. And to distract ourselves we came up with these challenges and hash tags. To distract ourselves from thinking of the worst. To distract us from the reality. To keep us from truly introspecting because we know we might end up finding out things about ourselves that we would rather not like about ourselves or didn’t have enough courage to face them yet.

This lockdown has changed our perception. It has become a test of our wills. Marriages where both spouses don’t have time apart from work have now been forced to spend all their waking hours together. It may bring them closer, or it may push them further apart. And that’s what is happening with every other relation in this world. But that’s the beauty of this virus. It has forced us to face reality.

The question is, are we going be able to handle reality?

By:-Vrishti Bansal

CSE