Lockdown: A Second Chance

LOCKDOWN! A time when everyone around the world is panicking, facing challenges, and wondering when it’ll finally be over.

I, on the other hand, am having the best time of my life.

YES!!! this lockdown was the best time I could have ever asked for! Here is why….

In March 2020 when this pandemic had just started, I was preparing for my backlog exams. Just mugging up every book and spending hours & hours just to get the degree in time. A degree that claims to give me a valuable place in this world. Then in the middle of my exams, the Lockdown happened, and just like everyone else I got relaxed and forgot about my damn exams.

I binged a never-ending list of series.

I studied and invested in the stock market.

Just like that, in a flick of a moment, the year was over. Gone. 

At last in the beginning of 2021, I was done with all my backlogs and was caught up with my friends. But still I didn’t feel the value that was claimed to receive. Rather I was thinking about the lockdown… All the things that I could have done, skills that I could have learnt, new territories that I could have explored. But for some reason I gave priority to what I was said to do by everyone around me. Then slowly this fire of curiosity inside me, to do things that I always wanted to do, went out.

However bad it may sound, I honestly hoped for lockdown to come back. To get that kind of free time again. So that I could do things that I want to do, regardless of what everyone else around me is doing and to get out of this wagon driven by the society which I think I was in since birth.

Well who knew that wishes came true, as in 2021 at the same time of the year, there is a second lockdown.

It began with me being tested positive and quarantined. I couldn’t have asked for a better beginning. Yes, I do sound crazy saying this but I actually wanted this.

To be alone outside the wagon and free.

Few years ago I had watched a JRE podcast with Naval Ravikant, in which he had quoted Confucius, “A man has two lives, the second one starts when he realizes he has only one.” Well, it just sounded very cool when I listened to it the first time. But during this quarantine, I experienced the realization that he mentioned.

I listed down every single thing that I want to do without thinking of its end result or consequences or how difficult they are or what others will say… but just that I WANT TO DO these things and that’s all that matters.

As my quarantine got over I dived right into the unknown, this time driving my own wagon running on the fuel of curiosity that I have.

I started doing projects at Enterprise full heartedly

I always wanted to lose weight and now I am working out daily,

I always wanted to study about nature and wildlife and now I am working on projects of sustainability to get deeper understanding about them,

I always wanted to know more about coffee and how coffee businesses worked and miraculously I am working on research and development for a coffee start up in Bangalore… and a lot more until the only thing left to do in a day is sleep.

I am not at all perfect at the things I do. In fact, I have made more mistakes than I could imagine. I got terribly exhausted at times. I definitely got bored the hell out of me many times. But I kept on doing and doing. In fact, before writing this blog I didn’t realize that I was doing so many things.

You do not need a second lock down to get a second chance. The choice was always yours and always has been to get back on your driving seat of your own wagon.