In an epic crisis, who really are you?

A crisis is a mirror. It tells who you are. And, whether you are truly prepared for the moment in front of you. Whether your gender, age, experience, skills, attitude and life curve has prepared you for it. Whether you have survival instincts, resilience, spiritual strength and the smartness that you claim to fight it. Whether you get it all together or lose it. Whether you will think of yourself, be sensitive to others, help others up or drag them down financially, emotionally, physically or energetically.

It is the time for your inner notion of your own self being called to write a test.

An epic crisis strips away all notions of superficial niceness, civility, strength, sophistication, and superiority from us, until we either find ourselves wanting, hate what we are, liking who we are turning to be in a crisis or finding that we are no different in a crisis than we normally would be anyway. That the qualities we most admire in ourselves normally are the ones that actually stand by us in a crisis. Or, that we have been fooling ourselves all along and wearing a mask so we are not ready to face the mirror naked.

There are many things that decide who is strong or weak in a huge crisis.

In a pandemic or world crisis, the ones who can grow their own food are the strongest. Even if it is only for their own consumption.

In a world crisis, the ones who are self-sufficient in terms of power through solar and other alternate means are the strongest.

In a crisis, the ones who have the know-how to fix gadgets, understand the basics of the medical, electrical or electronics, physics or chemistry are the strongest.

In a crisis, the presence of loved ones, and being able to reach out to loved ones becomes the most important thing.

In a crisis, the ones who know how to cook their own food, and clean up on their own are the sanest.

In a crisis, making a meal from scratch from almost anything that is available on hand is important. If you can cook with just two ingredients, you can survive longer. If you know what to eat raw you can survive even longer.

In a crisis, cash and physical assets is preferable to digital and virtual wealth.

In a crisis, the ability to stay calm, keeping ourselves healthy and motivated, entertain ourselves reasonably is important.

In a crisis, the ability to calm another, help another stay healthy and motivated, entertain them reasonably is important.

In a crisis the ability to help another is important but it can only happen when we are in a position to first help ourselves. Knowing this fact is important.

In a crisis, stocking but not hoarding is important. Not greedily grab all resources to ourselves but the exact opposite. Keep our needs and self-sufficiency to a sacred necessity.

In a crisis knowing how much independence we have, and how much to collaborate is important. Apart from the children, the aged and the unwell, all the others who are perfectly fit but do not possess the above skills would be pulling down the strength of all.

In a crisis, knowing when to raise a red flag, how much risk management is possible, and where real threats can come from instead of imagined anxieties and scenarios is important.

In a crisis, thinking strategically or logically is important. Keeping yourself updated about everything but not personalizing everything beyond a point, but enough to understand the short and long term effects for you, your family, your country or humanity is important.

In a crisis, knowing what you can and must control and what you cannot is important.

In a crisis, a sense of humour, compassion is very important. Almost a life saver.

In a crisis, having the ability to make a fellow human, animal or environment feel better is important.

You can add a lot more requirements that will be critical in a crisis. The list is never exhaustive.

In a crisis is when you find yourself, emerge your true self out of hiding or fall short. While a crisis is never a choice, it is the reality that one is dealing with, using whatever tools within oneself and around that are available to go past it. The longer it lasts, the more about you that it will reveal.

The primary tool in any crisis for survival is therefore firstly you. Yes. You.

If you are clueless on how to cook, clean up, be self-contained, become emotionally unstable, lack compassion, get easily panicky, are technologically handicapped, and all you know is how to click and order ready-made or canned food and possess no other skills than the notion that you are an entitled and privileged creature because you know how to use push a few buttons on a phone or computer and you have money in your account ... In a crisis, you are a dead weight. First of all to yourself. And, to those around you. Especially in the long run.

Develop these new skills if your life journey did not prepare you for this moment of crisis. This moment is all there is. You have time now on your hands, and a big crisis. Probably, the biggest in our lifetime or maybe the start of worse to come. If not now, then when do you ever think you will you or need to learn these skills?

This is your resume for a life crisis mission. The question is are you hire ready, fully qualified or have a lot of upskilling to do or merely some? Your resume comes with self-attestation. No other validation will be necessary.

All you need to do is keep looking in the mirror. And, hope that as the crisis extends, you like what you see in the mirror more and more.

-Srividya Srinivsan 26/3/2020