People are able to adapt

Modern day ordinary leisure

Includes consumerism, from various forms of dining out, shopping, social gatherings, virtue signalling of the highlight reel of our lives to gain social points – putting up a front to look important and occupied.

The entity or business perspective are the brick and mortar stores, bustling streets, trade and commerce between businesses advertisements and self-promotions bombarding their customers.

Now this is all taken away

What are we left with?

Businesses are reducing hours, evaluating their business models and some are halting operations. Even worse, the coming layoffs and some are contemplating closing down for good.

At an individual level, all these external extraneous pleasures are stripped away. What are we left with? At first the feeling of forced isolation, in the comfort of our homes but with the ease of access to the world - at the palm of our hands.

What comes out of this?

After my 3 weeks of self quarantine, my leisurely activities involving going out to train was impacted. My martial arts school understandably had to pause on holding classes physically. In this timeframe of their potential business losses emerged urgency to find a solution. They pivoted to holding classes online with conferencing call technology. So far we are trying that out and while there are some kinks to work out it is a temporary stopgap solution.

What is the moral of this story?

It represents the ability of businesses and people to change given their circumstances in order to continue to survive and thrive. This is but an atomized example, but slowly and surely other businesses will either rise up to this opportunity or all. At a larger scale our economy and country will adapt and progress. Remember, change is neither good nor bad. It just is. We choose how we act

Okay… That’s great, how is this relevant to me RIGHT NOW!?

Upon opening up the internet, statistics and news comes the constant bombardment of apocalyptic news headings. After a short period you have finally come to terms that constantly staying updating while cooped up at home is not good for our mental health. So doing away with browsing the news and internet and gotten bored with your various short term pleasures what are you left with? The though of being alone in your mind.

Actually being bored. Boredom isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing. It just is, in fact wrestling with the restrictions of boredom/complacency initiates change and adaptation. We can now make use of the newfound free time granted to us. It is a period to self reflect and figure out what you truly value. It is also an opportunity to see, find and do things that you normally would not have done in the first place.

A personal example

I enjoy fitness, diet and exercise. Before all this, I had two memberships, one at a local gym nearby and one to my TaeKwonDo school. Now both on pause. At the gym I weight trained. However, the facilities are closed because they are definitely the prime breeding ground for spread of any disease what can I do?

At first I struggled with coming up with my own at home workout programs. Faced with a problem at hand I stumbled upon something I would have never thought about before - _Calisthenic_s training. Doing these routines at a surface level looks relatively straightforward but exercised areas of my body I never normally used before and I feel challenged.

In fact this method of exercising looks overall more sustainable and minimal to me. Calisthenics benefits are more in line with my personal fitness mantra. Even when the gym opens back up I will incorporate this into my training more.

The call to action

If a family run business or large businesses that have many complex cogs in a machine can adapt in uncertainty, why can’t we?