“Are you on maintenance?”
This is one inevitable question that usually comes up when senior acquaintances and friends get to meet each other. They refer to their medicines to keep blood pressure or blood sugar within normal range.
“On maintenance” fittingly describes some of my senior friends who are living a life on maintenance physically and figuratively. They silently convey a message found outside the door of a hotel room: Do not disturb.
Before the pandemic hit us, I used to check on some of my senior friends for updates, and the conversation would taper off after a few minutes because we really had nothing new to talk about. Many times, I had to cut them, “yes, yes I know, you told me that already.”
Many of them have social- media accounts but they are inert. Last postings date back to a year or two years ago. They have no new additions to their list of friends or followers. Often, friend requests are simply overlooked or ignored. They can’t even be bothered to read inspirational tidbits or think of thoughts to share with others.
The long lockdown has even given them another good excuse to stay put, worsening their state of inertia. When I message some of them, they just answer back in their laconic default way: “OK lang.” Unable or unwilling to go out, they practically live in their living room couches, prisoners of TV binge watching. They are like money sleeping in the bank, kept there as maintenance deposit.
Then there is the other thing about maintenance as a way of life. I refer to people who are obsessed on maintaining their youthful appearance, their social or financial status. They maintain two or three vehicles, several residential properties, and so on to keep up with the appearance of belonging to the privileged upper class.
My neighbor is already old but his wife doesn’t want him to retire from his job as a contractual seaman so they continue to live off his income and keep up their social status in our neighborhood. He spends six months away from home every year. Just to show off, the family maintains several cars even though they don’t need them all, one for his daughter, another for his son and a third serves as a family car. Meanwhile, his daughter has become pregnant and his son has two kids already by different partners. I just chuckle and shake my head at the absurdity of it all.
Then there is the maintenance of power. Our small subdivision has a set of officers who have managed to maintain the status quo for the longest time. They always get elected because they have passed a policy that excludes voters who are against them. They got elected on a reformist agenda, accusing the previous officers of all sorts of anomalies. Now that they’re in power, there is no proper reporting. Because of opposition and disaffection, monthly dues are not paid or collected and the village has been physically deteriorating.
Isn’t this a micro mirror of our local and national leadership? Many senators, congressmen and local officials are bent on maintaining their hold on power and its concomitant privileges and entitlements.
Maybe this pandemic is the seismic event that should shock many of us from our comfort zones. It is a call to rise up from our lethargy.
The sudden surge of infections and the people of all ages who succumb to the disease, including acquaintances, should teach us that we could no longer afford to be lax and complacent about the way we carry on in our daily life. We need to be constantly deliberate about our movements inside and outside the home and should always be aware of potential danger in our surroundings. We must resist the temptation to allow the status quo to slide back in too quickly into our lives.
Together with this heightened awareness we should level up our appreciative mindfulness toward our daily blessings, the simple but tasty dish we just enjoyed, the fact that we are still alive, and so on. Let us now look at familiar spaces, things we had taken for granted, and the people around us with a fresh set of eyes. Let’s reframe our relationships with our loved ones in a more loving light, and discover new ways of connecting with them while you are all at home.
With this new perspective and awakened consciousness, let us also take a fresh look at something you probably have neglected into dormancy. Yourself.
Spiritual mentors point out that our present world is now going through a kairos moment, the right, critical, or opportune moment—for seeing, learning and growing. Reflect on what renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow said about points of transition: “One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again.” To learn and to grow we have to make that conscious effort to disturb, disrupt, stir our stagnant lives. We need to give up limiting and safe patterns that make us feel comfortable but would not yield a sense of meaning or fulfillment. To stand on the edge, make the leap and fly!
Let’s seize this moment to repurpose our lives and rediscover our individual “ikigai” a Japanese concept that means “a reason for being.” The word refers to having a direction or purpose in life, that which makes one’s life worthwhile. Many of us have the time and resources to volunteer, to mentor, and to contribute, goaded by the urge to make a difference. Take a look at your inner self and find your ikigai.
Recently, scientists have found dormant microbes in a 100-million-year-old sediment from deep beneath the ocean floor. When brought back to the lab and given oxygen, they came to life and started to multiply. How amazing that microbes that have been sitting in the sediment dormant for eons can suddenly come to life!
Perhaps, like these 100-million-year-old dormant living creatures, we can stage our own personal “resurrections” and discover parts of ourselves we had given up for dead but which are merely dormant and that old joys can reemerge, fresh and new and in a completely different form.
Like the moth or butterfly that cocoons itself for weeks, use this time to grow your mind through enriching reading and soaking up new experiences, absorbing art and talking with insightful persons even online.
Consider what someone said: “You can be anything you are passionate about!”
Then go for it with whole heart and single mind. For if we don’t pursue what we feel is a meaningful existence, life can become a repetition of trivial maintenance duties. You are safe within limits but life would be unrewarding.
Muhammad Ali was quoted as saying: “Any man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” On the same note, any person who would view life the same as he did before this pandemic has wasted months of opportunities during the long lockdown. For you would have missed the chance to be a new version of yourself.
So pull the plug off the socket of a past life on maintenance. Be like the many who say they don’t want to go back to old normality. In college ROTC, our commander would often bark: “As you were.” That can no longer be. We cannot carry on like we did before. The crisis is an invitation for us to design a new future. Let’s not miss the chance.
So my hope is that when it will be safe to take off your facemask for good in a post-Covid new world, you will emerge as a different person, one with renewed purpose, no longer contented with just maintaining the old ways, but reinvigorated to tackle the many formidable challenges that will surely come your way.