The Pandemic has changed me!

In a recent survey conducted by me in November 2020, for a Post-graduation project undertaken by me, one of the questions I had asked, – ‘Has Pandemic changed your views about how to live your life?’

[This survey was conducted to understand the importance of ‘Balance of Life’ in life of an employee and its relevance in workplace. If interested to read, the research paper can be downloaded from http://www.ijsrp.org/research-paper-1021.php?rp=P11811719 ) ]

Here is the response what I got,

Almost 90% of the respondents said, ‘Yes, in some way!’

55% of the respondents said, they have Re-evaluated their priorities, and 49% want to keep their needs simple. 47% value their family more. 58% said they want to live a ‘Balanced Life’. One can easily see the trend of people priorities shifting towards Life and relationships.

The response to this question did not surprise me, for, this is what everyone is feeling at the bottom of their heart. One cannot deny the truth any longer. Yes! Pandemic has indeed changed my life, our lives.

I belong to generation X, and I can say with clarity, that, our generation X had a busy life struggling between life and work. For most of us – career was first priority, we remained busy trying to prove one’s worth in the field of work, trying to get the best of comfort for the family though family life remained the second priority. But since the onset of Pandemic, life changed 360 degrees for most of the population of the world; people realised that their life is now confined to their family, which earlier was always the secondary priority. People who were earlier too busy to spend quality family time, suddenly realised that their loved ones have left without giving them a chance to tell them how important they were to them. People who kept postponing long vacation with family suddenly realised that probably that is not going to be possible in near future. People who lost their loved ones, the children who lost their parents, the parents who lost their young children, young widows…the Pandemic has left a scar in everyone’s heart and mind, and it would take years or probably decades to heal.

The current generations on the radar– the Gen X, the Millennials and the Gen Z; the luckiest of all generations – were born in one of the best times of mankind when the world moved towards peace and democracy. Jobs prospects were better, with the world economy cruising like a racing car. And suddenly the Pandemic busted the tiers of the car, bringing the world to a complete stop. Out of blue, these generations were suddenly clueless about how to handle the situation.

Pandemic has forced everyone to recheck the driving speed and tiers of their car. And this prioritisation of life’s priorities is now being felt by the companies across the world.  In recent months, ‘The Great Resignation’ in the USA (and other countries) is making headlines, which is the ripple effects from the pandemic, as employees have re-evaluated their careers and left their jobs in record numbers.

So, one must ask, people’s re-evaluation of their life’s priorities or to say their distraction from career, will it be helpful to the world, the industries or to the people themselves? Is this a positive or negative trend?

I think it was a much-required course correction. The ‘Balance of Life’ was highly skewed towards ‘Career’, ‘Materialism’ and ‘Consumerism’.  ‘Balance of life’ is a continuous process, one cannot assume that there would be a perfect balance, always a certain aspect of life would be skewed, and the nature would initiate a course correction to bring it in balance. As Swami Vivekananda, explains about equality, “We know from science that it is impossible. Disturb a sheet of water, and there you find every particle of the water trying to become calm again, one rushing against the other, and in the same way, all the phenomena which we call the universe — all things therein — are struggling to get back to the state of perfect balance. Absolute equality, that which means a perfect balance of all the struggling forces in all the planes, can never be in this world.”

In the end, when one is re-evaluating priorities of life, one must dwell upon one’s purpose of human life. Is it to make money, a career or to become a better human being? I would say, all are equally important, as our work and career also is a means to become a better or a worse human being,  it depends upon the the purpose we have chosen behind career. The purpose of my work can be simply to mint money, or to grow as a human being when I work with many other humans, or to improve the system of world, or it can be simply to help others to make a living, and many more… Our purpose for work will define what we would achieve out of it.

I always believe – after this life, in God’s court, and when He would ask me, “what did you do with the 80 years I gave you to live on earth? Are you the same person, I sent ? or a refined soul?”. I must have an answer, and that is the purpose of my life.

How your life shapes up depends upon the choices you make, the purpose you define, and how you want to use this ‘chance of Life’.

Think about it.

Rakhi Sunil Kumar

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