CHILL – LAY IT ALL DOWN

Teacher’s Diary

Even if you wanted to get busy, make contacts, fill up your weekly planner, take stock of the previous week’s endeavours and achievements etc., you can’t! The world is in a lockdown, basic courtesies are in a lockdown, in short normalcy is in a lockdown and if we’re not all careful, frustrations, anxieties and mental imbalances will take us over.

No more did this sink in than last Friday when I popped into the post office to get something done. Right up to the street, the ground was visibly marked with signs directing people to stand two metres apart. There was a sense of emergency wartime-like treatment in the air. Four people were allowed into the post office at a time by austere voiced shop attendants, two of who wore face masks.

I was particularly miffed by the fact that the other two shop attendants who in addition to wearing face masks wore rubber gloves and looked more like morgue attendants than high street shop attendants. They more or less barked out orders (rather than make the usual courteous offers to help or support) to customers. It felt as though the customers waiting to be served were definitely COVID-19 infested whilst the shop and its attendants were definitely COVID-19 negative.

There was this silly air of nastiness and harshness about that I wondered whether it really is necessary for any service to still remain open if people were going to continue to treat each other like “shit”. Do permit my language but I need to spill out the pervading negativity succinctly.

You must take care of your mental health this time than ever before. There really is no need to lose your mind and give way to impatience, grouchiness, snappiness and rudeness. It is indeed a trying time for everyone globally.

Going to the shops or market currently puts many mums and dads around the world in panic. Prices of basic needs have doubled, food is scarce, jobs are being lost, businesses are grinding to a halt, people are dying… the tales of woe are continuing. But you must take a grip on your mental health and remain stable and sound in mind.

It is now time for every individual to take stock of what they have left. What do you have left? Have you begun to make a list of all the skills, resources and ideas you have that might help you survive perhaps the next three to six months of lockdown?

Are you going to wait until it is too late to do an inventory of all you will need to get you and your family through the next six months of lockdown? Non basic or essential tasks, cannot be attempted now. Don’t even attempt them as to do so is to take yourself on a journey to the land anxiety and panic. Remember that you are not alone in this situation. It’s a pandemic issue meaning that it is felt globally. So chill and lay it all down.

Omoru writes from the UK