People May Survive COVID 19, Can They Live Through Loneliness Pandemic?

Photo by Michael Held on Unsplash

It is said that all the best literature comes out in times of despair. Tragedy breeds ideas and reflections form human nature. For humans, the sense of meaning takes precedence over the sense of being. Like, everybody, I was at home initially quarantined for about 14 days. 
A time which gave me respite from my ever busy yet predictable schedule of juggling between office, home, family, jogging, cycling and book reading. A pause that gave me insight into what is important and what matter most in one’s life. I thought to start the ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy-the thickest book in my collection. I always dreaded this book for its weight, like a heavyweight wrestler inviting me to the ring. So, lockdown was the best time to do a ‘one on one’. I realized one thing that lockdown does; it messes your schedule. Except for my work, I tried to keep it on, but it slipped by pushing my morning runs with mid-day cycling. In about one week into lockdown, the time defined its own clock. 
To get the steering back, I thought I should give a shout out. In the back of my mind was a teeming experiment about how people feel during this lockdown period. I have a predictable followership on social media -a plain vanilla consultant, a coach, a mentor. As a social media user, my posts are not a ‘go-to’ for political discussions, nor I am a conspiracy buff. So, in the middle of the night on March 28, 2020, I post a tweet-a shout out for volunteering my time for the coming week for a free consultation, coaching or just conversation-30 minutes GupShup. Anyone interested in a one-on-one conversation about business strategy, personal or professional challenges, or anything else on your mind? 
I preferred to do a GupShup in a South Asian style. In a literal sense, ‘chit chat’ in English is a toned-down version of GupShup. For Desi’s, Gupshup is more frank and casual conversation. I put the status and copy that back to my Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. For me, this was more of a shout out experiment to the world that like me you are not alone. I thought I may get to speak to around five to six of my contacts. In the morning I receive over thirty-four (34) requests for conversations. Folks wanting to have a conversation from North America to remote valleys of Pakistan. I find out that close to half of the appointments locked are by the persons are not in my friends' list on any social media platform. I got messages that some participants cannot wait till Monday for the scheduled sessions and want to do heart to heart even before their scheduled time. I made a playlist of my questions, which I wanted the answers from my participants. The questions about psychological aspects of the pandemic, economic shifts and human responses to the challenges. I realized that my laundry list of questions was small in relation to the overwhelming feedback I got from the participants. In the sessions, we spoke about macro forces, megatrends and signals. People wanted a diverse set of advice. From career-oriented mentoring to startup ideas. From academic to corporate, one thing was common in all the sessions. The fear of the unknown and the promise of the future. 
We spoke about big-ticket concepts like economic repositioning, changes in world power, agile manufacturing, automation to small trivia like domestic stress, floor mopping and cooking. Fluff conspiracy theories like Covid 19 pandemic engineered to gain virtual control of human beings, privacy controls to the human gesture of goodness by providing ration to daily wagers. We talked about when homo sapiens will again be able to touch, handshake or hug someone. We spoke about going back to pre-pandemic luxuries of story circles, kinesthetic learning and physical interactions.
We bitched about innovation fetishes like homemade rudimentary ventilators, which folks hoped will revolutionize the medicare industry, especially in developing countries. The knee jerk reactionary rapid research proposals. We had a pot-pourri from hi-tech to desi juggad engineering. We spoke about post-pandemic leadership. We deliberated how leadership response will be curated and remembered in the times to come. We spoke about the plight of SMEs, daily wagers and corporate responses. 
As I progressed with my sessions, I realized that the biggest toll of lockdown was mental. People wanted to brood, deliberate and share their thoughts on the post-pandemic landscape, but they also had their inherent needs to connect. My mentoring sample ranged from 80-year-old’s to new startup founders. Retired people who already had so many data points in their lives, recalling their memories with smallpox and measles and comparing that with the current pandemic. People were interested to speak, to share and to connect.
I felt that as humans, our sense of touch is the most powerful instinct. It may be a bio-chemical yearning that the more we are socially distant our instinct of getting connected for an ear to listen, a kinder hand to hold and a human heart to beat. Image for post My three-week sessions are over and my takeout from this three-week dialogue is that hope is the thing we all live by; hope will prevail, and humans are the best when they are social animals. Wishing all my readers happy and fulfilling conversations with your near and dear ones.