Today’s time has a number of parallels in history, which we as a human race encountered and ultimately triumphed. A number of tragedies when all seemed lost.
The most common response attuned in us human beings is of – fight or flight. However, there is one more response, which though not as popular as the other two, makes more sense in the current situation.
‘FREEZE’
Freeze would imply we have chosen to neither fight nor run away. However, this response can help us to buy the precious time, which is critical to developing the right strategy in handling the situation effectively.
A whole lot of Scientists and researchers funded by various governments and many pharma companies are toiling hard to come up with the vaccine. Even defense research units in most of the countries have diverted their funds to develop a cure for this pandemic.
However, this is taking time and will probably take even more. This delay could be one of the reasons people are becoming restless. Noone wants to be in a state of ambivalence for far too long and what we are hearing for the last 2 months is the same old rhetorical promise of getting a vaccine soon. Remnants of our evolutionary traits still want us to be in action or want us to be seen in action. However, people who are experts ought to be the ones in action right now. Not all situations demands action from everyone.
For the rest of us, it’s time to be in the ‘freeze’ mode as our brethren fight the time and come up with the cure soon.
The problem is ‘Freeze’ had never been an attractive action and so a lot of us abhor it, as we all want to be heroic. In a war, it is not only the soldier who fires or takes the bullet is a hero, but also everyone around him who helped him fight and win the war. We may not see their faces as much as we see the soldier’s but their prominence cannot be trivialized.
Today, we all have to be those anonymous heroes and the one thing we need to do to become those anonymous heroes is– ‘Freeze’ – Stay at Home.
deepak sharma writes 