Who do you want to be when all of this is over?

This crisis is taking away everything we had and giving us everything we no longer had: time and the rediscovery of the simplicity of life. But how we accept and integrate these gifts into our lives will be very important.

You are now closed and isolated in your home; you may feel a victim to what is happening to you. Temporarily stuck inside, your freedom of movement and action removed. Forced to suffer a difficult coexistence with the other members of your family in a reduced space. Or you could interpret this situation – which was absolutely impossible to imagine before – as a challenge to go beyond yourself, what you know about yourself and your automatic survival reactions. You can choose to become hyperactive or anaesthetise yourself with digital games or TV series to pass the time, or you can fully understand that this stop is actually an opportunity to review, rethink, rebalance what has not been working for some time now.

When we get out of our homes in a few weeks the world will be different. Our attitude towards the world will be different. But who will you be? Who do you want to be when all of this is over?

I truly believe this is a wonderful opportunity for inner retreat; it is an unparalleled open parenthesis in your life, a chance to rethink and reconnect with that part of you that has no interest in just surviving, but instead yearns to evolve.

How many things are you already observing in this limited space where you are locked up? How many things about you and our society can you no longer tolerate? How many bogus balances are inevitably breaking? How many relationships are on the verge of exploding?

Maybe this blessed time is allowing you to see how little you actually love the job you are doing. Perhaps it is allowing you to see the excessive sacrifices you have made by trading your family time to work on your career. Is it allowing you to understand how little you loved yourself, compromising your own values to keep up with the demands of your roles? And this whole situation is showing you how vulnerable and fragile you can be, potentially defeated by an invisible virus, but at the same time so incredibly powerful that you can rise from the ashes with an expanded awareness.

This is a collective and individual opportunity for profound transformation. I see myself and all of us as caterpillars ready to be reborn as butterflies.

But what do you need to make this profound transformation? Curiosity, stillness and silence.

Please stop. Even inside. Stop thinking. Listen to you. What hurts? What are the parts of you that are wounded, compressed, unheard and misunderstood? Or, conversely, what are the parts of you that are finally flourishing thanks to this stop?

You are naked in front of the mirror and you have the answers before you. Look inside. In the intimacy of your home you have stopped wearing many masks. Who are you seeing in front of you? Do you like who you have become? Do you fit the person you have become?

Believe me, the most wonderful and important question you can ask yourself now is "who do I want to be when all of this is over?

(Pic credits Unsplash - Bankim Desai)