Lessons From Isolation

504 hours or 21 days now in total isolation. 3 contacts with humans over these week’s where someone in a blue hazmat suit with a mask and face shield told me to relax while they inserted a 6-inch swap deep into my nose, touching me near the brain.

The days blurred from Day 5 to Day 18, no memory of what happened, what I did, what I accomplished. 3 times a day the doorbell would ring and I’d rush to collect my food like a dog in a Pavlov experiment hoping to get a glimpse of the human in a blue hazmat suit running away.

I’ll emerge tomorrow a stronger person, hardened and softened by the experience. I have learned lessons that aren’t just applicable to surviving isolation, but ones I’ll carry forward and I’d like to share with you.

1.    Family and friend’s matter. We need each other. I contacted family more often, I reached out to friends I haven’t “seen” in a long time. I realized that I missed people, and people missed me. We need each other. Call that friend you have been thinking about, now. They need to hear from you. And you, from them.

2.    The world is full of interesting people, doing interesting things. I joined LunchClub met some amazing people.  I answered all those DM’s in my LinkedIn that wanted to have a virtual get to know you “coffee chat”. Total strangers. We scheduled meetings, 2 totally different people, with more differences than things in common. We connected, shared our stories, listened to each other.

 I found that as humans we have far more in common than the world, media and social media often wants us to realize. Meeting someone new this week. Get out of your comfort zone.

 3.    Getting comfortable in our own skin to say, is so important. Being with yourself. Accepting yourself for who you are, today. This version. We dream, plan and invest to improving ourselves. But accepting yourself as you are, is so important. I wrote this in my book Dear God – Book of Others, and I didn’t realize how true it is, until these 21 days.

4.    Time is an illusion, and everything is temporary. I’ve been away from the office physically for 44 days now. The “physical” time is the longest I haven’t been in my office over the 30+ years I have been a home office employee. Yet, the daily rush from one task to another, the pressure to complete this by then, and that before lunch, is truly an illusion. The rule of momentum is there and once things are started; the words are spoken, the universe goes about delivering. On its time, not the illusion of time and space we occupy in our minds.

Finally, COVID has brought so many changes in our day to day lives, and yet it is not done yet delivering lessons. Lessons that we don’t yet fully appreciate. Only perspective can do that.  

For me, love myself, accept myself unconditionally, reach out to the people in my life that I miss and that miss me, make new acquaintances, and appreciate the differences in each other, not let them divide us, and allow things to develop and deliver on their own timeline, not the illusion of time we create.