A question we have all been asking…
By Sonali Sokhal
Today, I received a forward from a friend, one that suggested that the days of the week should actually be placed into thisday, thatday, anotherday, instead of Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. It’s been the most significant change of my life during this lockdown. And, as we all look down into the maws of the black swan event monster, that impacts the global economy as well as ours, perhaps, a change that will happen in the lives of many.
Just a few weeks ago, most of us lived in a constant state of meaning and frenzy. Our lives, especially my life was mapped into chores, days, task lists, and to-dos. Life was hectic and many times frenetic. There was so much to do, say, email and iterate, and then suddenly, after a few weeks of utter disaster, there were long hours of silence. As an ancillary industry, selling the good life to people, we were so dependent on the possibility of peace, economic growth and health…Things that we have mostly taken for granted are… now gone.
As we struggled to pick up the ashes of what was left, the first week felt like a trainwreck, and then slowly, we got used to the new circumstances, the slow pace, the interminable passage of time, which tended to pass very slowly, and the days folded into each other through the lockdown. The first week was spent bemoaning fate, life, the origin of the virus and everything that could be blamed. The second week had been a rally round of trying to come to terms with a new reality and now by the third week, we muddle along at a pace. What has gone though, is the frenzy, the sense of time as a resource that cannot be squandered. The need to make lists. I must confess in the beginning I rebelled against it. I made lists of courses I must do to upgrade skill sets, planned menus, cleaned the house, organised folders and tried to make the routine as packed as possible. It didn’t work. This was not a time for self-importance apparently, but more time for self-reflection. The real world as I perceived it no longer existed. The sense of impending doom to finish off tasks slowly started evaporating off my psyche, on a slow burn. The sense of urgency unwound itself from the coil of me and left me untangled, unfettered and unfortunately, oh so very free.
Who was I now? Was I still the CEO of a company? I still had a team- a bit mussed up, a bit bent and broken in places by the train wreck that had happened to all of us, we still had a bit of work. But the title had begun to sound hollow, was I now Sonali, not the best dishwasher, terrible roti maker, brilliant baker? Did my mundane everyday tasks now define my selfhood? Was I only the job I went to, every morning, so passionately and so sincerely, every day for the past decade or so? Did an extended lockdown mean that my most professional impulses would slowly strip itself away, peeling away the old layers to perhaps reveal something new? Was that even possible on the wrong side of forty?
Was I just Mother/CEO and sometimes jolly person to drag along for a drink? Was there all that was to me? No, I had always considered my personality well rounded, hadn’t I? Then why had the sense of not having a full-time job anymore, an office to go, a to-do list to tick off leave me so bereft? Why was there so much grief? When had I stopped being Sonali, and become the woman who was defined by her work? I don’t know really. It could be we live in a society where we always place the most emphasis on what we do professionally. It’s the first question we ask people we don’t know or want to know, and we always think more or less of them when they answer. And heaven forbid if someone doesn’t have a job, or is not madly passionately 110% into their work, they are for many of us the worse kind of pariahs.
But really, who are we when the job isn’t there? I think for me, this has been the most profound and existential question to ask of myself in the past few days. Right now, as I wrote this, the meal is done, the day stretches ahead of me full of endless possibilities, to do, or not to do, and my son sits nearby in companionable silence. The answer to my question, it seems will lie in the course we set for the future. Will work matter? Yes, of course, it will. It’s a livelihood, passion and skill. Will it be the only thing that will matter? I’m not so sure about that anymore!
About the Author:
Sonali Sokhal, is still the CEO of Intelliquo, a boutique lifestyle PR agency. She lives in New Delhi with her son. She is learning a whole new set of skills in this lockdown
