This lockdown is a luxury a few can afford.
As I sit in my room typing this piece overlooking the courtyard in my building, I see a group of people nonchalantly playing a game of frisbee. To their credit, the game inherently follows the laws of social distancing, so they are well within their rights to not give a ‘duck’ about Justin Trudeau’s pleas to the public about staying home. After all, being a rebel is the new norm.
These unprecedented times have brought forth with them a plethora of vicissitudes that have people scrambling for solutions. Suddenly, people can work from home all they want, meetings can take place virtually, and mental and physical well-being is the top priority! Now, I am not saying that these were not prevalent before. It’s just that the order of the list was a bit different. To put it delicately, things were always urgent. Basically, one was always racing against time like quicksilver to the tune of Jim Croce’s If I could save time in a bottle. (Don’t worry if you didn’t get the X-men reference. Use this quarantine time to catchup with the rest of the world silly.)
This brings me to my main point. These times of lockdown are a luxury. To those who can afford it. Have a subscription for Netflix/Disney+/Hulu/HBO? Great. Entertainment ain’t a problem. Meanwhile, people in the global south are trying to get a decent internet connection so they can reach out to their loved ones to ensure that they are ok. You’re tired of working from home, and would like to take the day off, to cook yourself a nice meal? Sure, go ahead! In the meantime, Farmers in southeast Asia don’t have enough fuel or hands to run their machinery to harvest their crops. Wanna take this time to meditate and refocus your energies on hobbies and building on your relationship footprint? Why not! Concurrently, a desperate job seeker could have benefitted from your network circles.
My aim is not to guilt-trip you into refraining from the standard of life you enjoy. My aim is to bring to your attention the fact that even doing practically nothing and still being able to flourish, let alone surviving is a luxury not many can afford. Recognize that.
For millions of people out there, they have no frickin’ clue about what their next day might look like. There are people out there whose businesses have shut down. There are jobseekers like me in the middle of a hiring freeze. There are farmers out there with unharvested and rotting crops. There are tenants who are frantically ringing all possible channels of communications so that they can avoid being evicted unlawfully. There are people across different income strata whose budgeting exercises for the month have now proven to be futile, simply because of this unforeseen pandemic. And then there are gym chains who have closed off all communication channels so that people can no longer cancel their subscriptions. Not to forget, the billionaires asking people to donate to the charities that they believe in.
It’s already become an old trope of celebrities complaining about lockdown from their million-dollar mansions. However, we aren’t doing anything different. The key difference here is of scale. The Scale of followers. The scale of influence. The scale of recognition. This global pandemic has made me realize that anything can be prioritized IF those in decision-making capabilities can see beyond legacy methods. Suddenly the economy deems those very people as ‘essential’ whom the society thought were not deserving of a raise in minimum wage. The very fabric of this capitalist society depends on those ‘essential’ workers for us to be able to complain about our boredom, the void of finishing our favourite TV series, and not being able to enjoy our weekends at our favourite restaurants.
Now, you would be completely right in asking me the following question: “but Shreyas, I DO deserve this time to indulge in activities which I couldn’t before, and the world for long has been an imperfect one. Why did you not bring these issues up before?” My first comment? I agree. Wholeheartedly. However, much of our time then was devoted towards either solving one those problems, in our personal or professional capacity, or we did not have some of those problems to begin with, since they arose out of this particular pandemic. The idea here is not to contest which entity or individual is still working the hardest to eradicate those problems. The goal here is to realize and recognize that luxury and wealth might not equate to each other and mean different things to different people. The luxury of time. The luxury of a roof over your head. The luxury of worry-free income. The luxury of your comfy pyjamas.
So, the next time you’re at the luxury of playing frisbee with your friends, ask them if there’s any other luxuries you can help them afford. Chances are, they are racing like Quicksilver too, and need a little introduction to Jim Croce. (Yes, before you ask, it’s available on YouTube)
