Being in 2020!
By: Sonnal Pardiwala, Shrinkology
Tags: Mental Health, Introspection, Counseling, New Year

What a transformative year it has been for every single soul on this planet!

So much each one of us learned to make do and live with or without.

We came face to face with the one person we needed to meet.

Our own selves!

Let us look at the basic changes in my and most likely your lifestyles.

Day structure collapsed.

Prior to the Lockdown, we had a day structure. A time to get up. Cook and clean around the work hour and report to work. I spend few hours at work, came back home. The remaining hours were divided in following my side hustle, reading up and spend time with my family.

Come Lock down and there was no work or travelling to report to. Work came home, on my mobile and for you on your mobiles. The device that was an entertainment gadget and connecting device became the work operandi for me and most! Work and Leisure both came on the same device.

Suddenly appearances became obsolete. Earlier painstaking effort had to be undertaken for dress, hair, makeup, matching outfits!

Now only my face showed and my Voice mattered.

The two assets were my knowledge and my voice.

I literally had to teach every concept of academics in this new way.

I had to change the way,I related to my counselling clientele. The video fatigue had to be dealt with. Text session became the preferred and convenient mode of action.

Suddenly, I found myself checking homework and offering counsel on the cell phone. There was this deep urge to simply keep it away for a while. Yet, we all kept checking for any texts, any instructions, new development in news, messages, updates.

There was an exodus of live shows and the need in me to keep up, made me hit the panic button often. I did live shows on card Reading, crystals, made video courses on esoteric subjects and frantically tried to stay afloat with the competition. I found myself sinking in the swallowing waters of depression and gloom. There came a time to speak my truth to myself and risk isolation once again. I spoke my truth to concerned people that the live shows I was invited to did not simply resonate. I felt odd repeating the appearances. I maybe good but I was not happy. In that decision of saying No I had to let go a lot of belonging of a community, I had found membership in!

Isolation was Real.

Lockdown literally locked us all in house arrest.

It was implicitly agreed that only one member will go out to buy necessary stuff. Whatever could be ordered online must be ordered online. Every festival we screamed of commercialisation and overhyped exploitation slipped out of our grasp. This year saw the cancellation of every Revelry we despised yet indulged in mindlessly.

Without these events to look forward to, we dropped into isolation. The only close ones were our own family with whom we lived. Even neighbours kind of avoid each other. It is only now we nod at each other but choose our distance. Every one is worried what the other might pass on!

We have as a humanity drifted away from warm meeting, greeting and gathering. The mask on our face that hides us were so detested in the past have become the 'must have' now.

The only recourse we have now is to meet ourselves and find ways to restructure our new reality and meet the one person, we didn’t!

Our own selves.

Restructuring and Reconnecting

As the day moved, we found ourselves getting lazier. There was no where to go but one room to another. We got up later in the noon hours. We made friends with boredom too.

The mess in the house mounted. No one was visiting. Why clean?

We bought no new outfits. The cupboards are messy with unironed clothes.

Who do we have to impress?

I showed up for work in a T-shirt and hair quickly combed up!

Who will see it anyway?

The work hours were less for not everyone had enough data!

What to do with oneself?

True we as a family had more time but after a while all topics of mutual discussion were exhausted.

That is when the need for creating personal structures arose.

From 'What are we doing today?' we moved to 'This is what I plan to do today?'

Each one of us learned to arrange and rearrange our time together for activities that would enhance the personal self and activities that we would do together.

The spoken word became our Restructuring agent. Each had to forge a time in the little house so we don't clash nor get into each other's way.

We learned to fight and make up faster. For no one can open the door and barge out. There were these two rooms and things had to be hashed out here itself.

A lot emerged as a result. We began seeing each other as the individual we each were with needs and found ways to fulfill those. We learned to apologise and laugh at each other and with each other.

We each let out our irrational selves and be ok with it.

We accepted the lazy hours that spread endlessly.

We learned to appreciate the tiny house in which we had spend such less time earlier. We offered Gratitude for the tiny garden we did not cover in with grills. It is our open piece of sky in this house Confinement.

As we gazed in the sky we asked vital questions to ourselves on

'How much do we really need?' 'How much can we do without?'

Yes we learned we don't need heaps of clothes and endless hours of shopping. We can cook practically everything exotic at home and enjoy it too.

I was a no make up, no cosmetic person. This year simply validated the irrelevance of it all.

The most important turn around came as we eviscerated layers and layers of false identity we had adopted. In order to raise a family and earn money, we had taken up roles.

Sitting at home, twiddling thumbs, gazing at the navel, going days without bathing, we finally admitted, we need to find who we are!

While my hubby found his path(literally and figuratively ~his podcast story is named 'The Path), I had to drop off roles too.

As a mother I had taken up side hustles along with teaching academics.. I could teach Reiki, Crystals, Energy Healing, Tarot, Oracle cards. I was good too. I am still but when I asked essentially' Who I am?' a deeper answer emerged. It took few months to distil the wisdom inherent in this insight. It meant I may lose membership of ton of community of women who subscribed to esoteric!

I had to risk it.

I had to accept and be willing to start again from zero to bring to myself my own community!

I had to accept within myself!

I am a Psychologist!

I allowed the inner answers to emerge and express themselves.

They took the shape of this blog, the podcast, the media updates and my tiny ebook Get Hold of Panic.

When you accept who you are, the expressions cascade and create themselves!

My biggest takeaway from the year was shedding of all that is and was unnecessary.

We can live with a lot.

We can live without a lot.

As Viktor Frankl put in his book 'Man' s search for Meaning ' He who has a why will live with any how!

I have found a ' Why ' which was waiting patiently for me to acknowledge it, revive it and give it the needed lease of life!

I leave this year with lot of love and reverence.

Till now the question was

How do I earn money to sustain my family?

The question continues but now I have an added mission

'How do I connect and serve?' 'How do I make a difference and impact a heart that needs soothing?' 'How do I reach out to those who reach out to me?'

The year 2021, I usher in with a new resolve of offering what I have to those who most need it!

I wish to create awareness for therapy and the void it can fill for those who go misunderstood, unheard and feeling undercared!

A Therapist is the only one who would support as you grapple with your own swings of 'Who am I?

I wish to build my community that cares and motivates everyone who reaches out.

The pace will not be fast and development erratic but we will emerge with more!

So has the year 2020 shown us.

Yes we got up late

We dressed haphazard

We lost controlled environments

We forget when we get up what day is it!

The beauty is now we can fill it with what we have within unhindered by external dictates, we listen to the symphony that we created out of who we are!

2020 you are much loved and so the blog that wishes you Au revoir is as unstructured as you were and yet the intent listener will take from it what is, truly within !

By Sonnal Pardiwala.