This text was originally published on my former blog typeoneminimalist.com. The website has been offline since 2020. This is an archive version.

Life seems surreal these days. Everything feels a bit more pessimistic. Perhaps we can use this thoughtfulness to improve. An attempt to make sense of our existence from quarantine.

I’ve thought about writing this blog post quite often during the past weeks. But about what? I’m struggling, just like everyone else. I don’t see the word “opportunity” in the “pandemic” or “quarantine”. It’s a state of emergency and we shouldn’t treat it any differently. Even more, we shouldn’t go through it with our eyes closed trying to be as productive as possible or looking for egoistic opportunities. That would be the equivalent to getting drunk and blacking out whenever a problem arises – running away from the actual problem. Though public life is slowly starting up again in Austria, things won’t be the same for a long time. We’ll have to live with that. But amid the chaos, the most basic principles of life become clearer than ever.

In every case, the past two months have taught us a lot of valuable lessons – consciously or unconsciously. About ourselves, our values, the world we want to live in, our goals and the way we deal with difficulties. And I’ll be honest, I’m definitely not a prime example when it comes to dealing with uncertainty. Before the virus hit Europe, I thought I had figured out a lot of things about myself. I had not. I did and still do know nothing. Moreover, dealing with the unclarity of the situation has had a big toll on me. On some days, I get up incredibly motivated, ready to seize all the time of the day while on other days I end up lying in bed watching Star Trek all day. I hate that. But it’s normal. We’re all yearning for a “normality” that might never come. Thinking we could operate normally in an unusual situation would be incredibly foolish. Even now, we still haven’t fully understood how to deal with this new uncertainty.

Admittedly, we might never be able to figure it out. But in the meanwhile, we can sort out some other ideas about life. I did find some lessons in my own struggles. Here’s what they are.

Time is linear … but unpredictable

The time we live in is inherently linear. We live in the present. Moment by moment. Every moment that has passed is forever lost in the … past. That’s why it’s called the past. It originated from the Middle English word “passen” meaning “to pass” in the 14th Century. Everything that lies ahead of us, on the other hand, we call the future – by definition “everything that is yet to be”. We exist in-between those timelines. We can never revisit the past nor can we foresee what will happen in the future. Certainly, we can make assumptions about the future based on our experiences in the past. But we can never be sure.

And that’s what we need to realize. The future is largely unpredictable and we must stop pretending it’s not. Just because things went well for a while, it doesn’t mean it will always stay that way and vice-versa. Very few things in life will ever go as planned regardless of how good the plan is. You can make no mistakes and still lose. That’s life. What would we be if we could pre-write our entire existence? Isn’t the unexpected what makes us human?

Everything is worthless

A daunting thought, isn’t it? But sit down for a moment and think what your individual actions and achievements are objectively worth. And I mean truly objectively, not by the standards of society but by your existence. Under the standards of nature, we’re all the same. Humans. We need to become aware of this. Way too often, we chase idealized standards that aren’t our own. The truth is, the only true worth comes from within us. Worth is what we individually declare as worthy – and the result of this declaration largely differs from person to person.

Re-evaluating worth and value also unravels another lesson: A lot of things don’t really matter. Taking a break from university and work for a few days to figure things out for yourself won’t make any difference in a few weeks or years. Moreover, just because someone else seems to have his life more together, it doesn’t mean that you’re worse of a person. In a lot of cases, these people are dealing with a lot more difficulties than you might expect in other areas of life. Focus on yourself first. Your values, your goals and your ideal world. This might sound selfish initially, but the inner awareness you’ll gain will make you a better human positively affecting your entire environment.

Be real about your needs

Yet another aspect of life we often seem to repress rather than address. To be true to ourselves, we need to figure out why we do what we do. It’s the only way to actively alter our path in a better direction. And by better I mean the closest we can ever come to happiness and peace. Which environment, which people, which routines, which tasks and which lifestyle do you need to thrive? Be real and deliberate about it. This realization doesn’t come quickly but takes years, maybe even decades. But it’s important to address it. By turning our lives completely upside down, quarantine might have provided us with the soil and space to facilitate these values.

Also, we need to talk about coping mechanisms. When the nationwide quarantine started, everyone was heavily hit by the sudden changes in our everyday life and everyone reacted somehow. Some fell into a hole of sleeping in every day, others started to over- or undereat and yet others escaped into sports, video games or alcohol. The reality is that we all cope with difficult situations in some way or another. If the lockdown has taught us one thing it’s that we need to better understand how to keep ourselves sane when facing the unexpected. In its core, coping mechanisms are nothing else but routines – and in order to not lose ourselves in scary situations, we need to know which coping mechanisms work best for us. To give you an example: I know that working out and reading every day will save me from the worst. It’s not perfect, I still have to force myself to do it and it doesn’t fully prevent me from having bad days. But it ensures my basic functionality. We need it to admit it when we’re not fine. Only then we can address it actively.

What is normality anyway?

A lot of the points I make here are more abstract than precise. But I feel like that’s what we need more than ever in our specialized world: the bigger picture. We care about productivity, our resume and apparent opportunities but forget that we’re nothing but humans.

Let’s make this quarantine about realization. After being shaken in-between uncertainty, fear and thoughtfulness for weeks, let’s define what we want a new “normality” to look like before going back to it. The old “normal” needed improvement in a lot of areas anyway. Where to start? With yourself. Life is play and with every day and action, you’re altering and refining its script. Make it a play truly worth living for.