Akshansh Kumar, Hill Top School.
The refulgent sun tempts you, the melodious cooing of birds translate into plethora of your emotions, the amber autumn foliage reminds you that summer is being chased away by the golden hues of autumn . You crave to go out…you crave to be once, for once out of your lonely abode but then you are jolted back to reality , a reality that is diabolic , a reality that haunts..you close your eyes and all you perceive is darkness .
You open your eyes and the uncertainty of the days to come greets you with a fiendish smile. You feel dejected, despondent but you ‘anyway’ go about doing your chores . Your mind screams for you to stop but you move on, it screams, “I’m not alright” but your unfeeling, stoic body says, “Move on !”. And this my friends , is what we are doing wrong, may I add ‘collectively’- we prioritise our physical health over our mental health when health infact is defined as-“A state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity .”
Ask yourselves a question today: how many times have you rushed to a doctor when your stomach wasn’t working alright or how many times have you imagined having contracted an umpteen number of diseases when some of your body parts weren’t functioning properly ? and then ..how many times have you ruthlessly ignored your mind being a clutter of unnecessary thoughts that it shouldn’t be or how many times have you belittled it by saying, “It’s just a phase”??!
This quarantine has made us realise a lot of things and one lesson of the many is this : MINDS ARE OUR TEMPLE. It’s a place-sacred and profound – that needs to be visited regularly, a place whose significance is ignored until in times of crisis . As much as your physical ailments need a cure, your mental infirmities also need to be taken care of and ‘cured’ . We need to realise : Stagnation causes more harm and has far more detrimental consequences than failures because , in my opinion , the very essence of human life is to keep moving ….be fluvial, from sadness to happiness , from failures to successes and the cycle continues .
‘Depression’ and ‘mental illness’ are two topics that are widely ignored and stigmatized . As we meander through these dark times, we need to realise that ‘depression’ was never normal and will never be . Anurag Kumar, a psychiatry resident at AIIMS, New Delhi, jumped off the tenth floor of his hostel building after battling depression for months . An avid reader and writer, he blogged his entire journey through depression. In one of his recent Quora answers, he wrote, “COVID-19 has worsened my situation”. This is just one of the many sad but true examples that this world is strewn with.
So, realise the importance of human connections and cherish them, the importance of being happy ..satisfied, understand that’s ‘it’s NOT NORMAL to say, “It’s normal to feel sad”. Reach out to your friends and family when you feel low, asking for help does not make you less of a human…it only affirms that you are one. Develop a hobby – journalling through these rough times so that you can reflect upon them in a hopeful future? Why not ! or getting yourself involved in an online dance course ? Definitely! Do anything that makes you feel alive but once, for once , delve deep into your mind, take care of it and discover this labyrinth to find out what a captivating place it is !! And remember –
“You say you’re depressed – all I see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up inside out. It doesn’t mean you’re defective – it means you are human.” ~ David Mitchell.
