The main words of April are “quarantine” and “self-isolation”. Almost a month has passed since the beginning of serious restrictive measures, and it is already quite possible to draw confident conclusions.
I’ll make a reservation right away: since a clearly difficult decision has been made at the state level, we must endure it, however difficult it may be. It is difficult to find any advantages in self-isolation, but they are. A lot of things fell into place, the grains separated from the chaff, the important remained, the secondary left. Many people even changed their inner circle of communication: they had to give up on someone, and someone, on the contrary, came. So the month has passed not without rethinking, but it is always useful.
Perhaps the main conclusion is that all the ideal constructions of relatively free time as the main source of self-development crashed into a boat of life. No, this, unfortunately, is not the case. It does not give any impressive self-development a large amount of free time. Checked by coronavirus. In the vast majority of cases, an excess of leisure leads only to regression and degradation of the individual. And as before, the paradox remained undoubted: the less time, the more you have time.
Let's answer ourselves honestly: how many books have most of us read while we are self-isolating? The answer is disappointing: those who read before continued reading, but for those who have not yet found time for serious literature, the result tends to zero. How many new languages have people learned? How many online courses have the sufferers completed? The answer is the same: in the vast majority of cases, good intention has remained intent. Woz and now there.
And there is no one to blame. The nature of man is so arranged: he strives for maximum comfort with minimal effort. Actually, by and large - and what's wrong with that? In any case, it’s like this: everyone wants to get maximum profit at minimum cost. And if, with all other things being equal, you can lie on the couch, watch TV shows and eat deliciously, then little can make you put aside all these blessings of humanity and begin training, reading smart books and preparing diet meals. After all, hard work is vomiting, as the classic correctly noted. But Pushkin knew what he was talking about. In a word, if a fried rooster has not pecked right, then why baptize?
Remember all these social experiments in Northern Europe, when a person was offered a guaranteed basic income in the hope that he would use his free time for creativity and self-development? How did it end? Nothing in most cases. The experiment did not justify itself either in terms of money spent, or in terms of time. In Finland, this approach has not led to an increase in unemployment. The project was closed as ineffective.
No city of the Sun, where people work for four hours, and the rest of the time they use for creativity, as Tommaso Campanella dreamed in the 17th century, is impossible.
There were many utopias, and each time they all split up on everyday life and the human essence, but for some reason this error is alive up to the present day. That supposedly free time is a source of progress. Exactly the opposite!
We have no other incentive except a lack of time and a desire to have time to do more. Only in these conditions can a person overcome himself, go forward and achieve success.
Wanted to sit at home, relax, stay with loved ones? As they say, be afraid of your desires. We didn’t really like it, right?
“Do not let your soul be lazy! So as not to crush the water in the mortar, the soul must work ... ”- this is possible only in harsh conditions and tight limits.
And now the next question: how soon will all these clever conclusions and experience be turned into dust, and the joy of daily trips to work and all our ordinary everyday routine, which has become so sweet during self-isolation, will lose the charm of novelty? I bet that very soon - just a couple of weeks, or even less.
The main lesson of history, as you know, is that it does not teach anyone. Self-isolation will soon inevitably end, many of the things that we have put off for so long will remain unfulfilled, and very soon we will again want to rest, stay at home, and many people will remember this month off from life as a very good pastime. Man is incorrigible.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.