Let’s celebrate the mundane stuff in these hectic times

If you have not felt the undue pressure to exponentially alter the course of your life in these Covid-19 times, then count yourself among the fortunate ones.

It has been said that Covid-19 has given us the gift of time. That this gift of time could deliver us from the yoke of procrastination by leading us to the path of unleashing our great potential and fulfilling ambitions we may have had before a virus forced us to keep social distance and stay at home.

The message here seems to be: stay at home but become great at something while at it.

Even a cursory glance at social media platforms reveals a flood of well-orchestrated and documented triumphs of people bettering themselves in dancing, parenting, knitting, gardening, interior design, cooking, and all manner of things.

Facebook Pages like “Let’s Cook Kenyan Meals” and “Home Beautiful” are swamped with such posts of great cooking, great gardening and great interior décor, among others.

Everyday conversations, too, are peppered with calls for people to come out of this period wiser, better-behaved, healthier, fitter, more knowledgeable, and perhaps closer to God or in better touch with their spirituality. There are forwards on WhatsApp specifically dedicated to preaching this gospel.

If your achievement is sleeping for 11 hours, eating five meals a day, watching all the seasons of Selina and gaining four kilogrammes in a week, then you may have felt unworthy of this gift of time from Covid-19.

You shouldn’t, because with all your presumed shortcomings, you are enough. We all are. And there’s no greatness race to be won.

For many people, the decision to better themselves is couched in the belief that who they were before Covid-19 came calling was not good enough, and therefore, they need to use this period to manufacture a better version of themselves.

Such a view can only be described as anxiety-inducing because the more it infiltrates the mind the more mental pressure it exerts.

And while this may be up for debate, the only sure thing that such great expectations can cause to them and those around them is great frustration.

Life as we know it has already come to a shuddering halt. Some of the only guarantees we have are that lives and livelihoods will be lost. And that our physical and mental health will be compromised along the way.

Just coming out of this stressful period alive and sane will be a great achievement, even if you are not wiser, fitter, healthier, kinder or more talented than you were before Covid-19.

The World Health Organisation has already warned that one of the main psychological effects of Covid-19 is elevated rates of stress or anxiety.

You must have already felt these emotions zig-zagging through your mind and body. Coupled with the fact that researchers have linked the increase in use of social media with a surge of mental afflictions such as depression and anxiety, one can easily conclude that most of us are sitting on a ticking time bomb as far as our mental health is concerned, especially if we follow the “make something out of yourself” crusade.

In fact, a 2015 research by Swansea University’s College of Human and Health Science found that too much time online could damage your immune system and make you more susceptible to flus and colds.

Perhaps it’s time to switch gears and start celebrating the mundane things in life: like sleeping, waking up, having a meal — anything that spells normalcy and plain old survival.

The couch potato who is whiling away his long days dressed in his pajamas and pondering over nothing in particular or filling his mind with watching mindless television and not making any effort to discover his super powers is probably doing himself a great favour.

Maybe our bulwark against mental stress and anxiety lies in cutting everybody around us some slack by lowering expectations of greatness and celebrating the mundane.