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Campus life by Zuni Chopra: And so the days go on
Smile because in the world we live in today, we can no longer afford to disparage joy, no matter its size
“Do you ever wonder where we’d be right now?” That was what I’d asked my distant friend over Zoom, the last time we spoke. “If this hadn’t happened?”
“Sometimes,” she replied, “but I realised pretty quickly that it’s quite pointless.”
I’d been daydreaming about California springtime and summer internships, but jerked back to the present at her words.
“Pointless?” I repeated. “Why?”
“Well, because…we aren’t there, are we? We’re here.”
There was something in the simplicity of that statement that stirred something in me, in the midst of my indulgent pining. We’re here.
Coping mechanism
A global pandemic isn’t an easy thing to write about. Like any form of suffering, there is prejudice and privilege in its superficial anarchy. As someone young and loved, and financially stable, I have to recognise all the ways in which, through no painstaking effort of my own, I have been granted such privilege.
And yet there is a certain togetherness, as there always has been, in human emotion. In the slowly growing staleness of soul that comes with familiar rooms, with claustrophobic roofs, with little boxes on a screen masquerading as love, posing as pitiful purpose. The knowledge that this will go on more days than you can calmly cross off the calendar is indeed a heavy thing. Staying up late into the night, my university experience has become midnight classes, scattered texts of greeting, Instagram posts of rainy windows. So we bumble along, finding our little joys.
There are a few treasured things that will carry us through this time. Whatever I could say about them has already been said, whatever wise quotes I could spout already dispensed. But there are a few ways I seem to have found in my attempts at coping. They’re not really tools so much as magic tricks; I don’t fully understand them, and they don’t always work. Here are a few:
Read. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare, doesn’t have to be Sartre. Read something that transports you, something that takes you on adventures, ones that perhaps, you haven’t been on before.
Turn life into a treasure hunt. Anticipation, eagerness, wonder; these are emotions that, if you can find them, cut quite cleanly through the daily damp. Tell yourself that you will discover one thing every day that makes you truly happy. A moment, an activity, a photograph. Or better yet, set a date for something you’ve been waiting to do. Even if it’s just a little thing, we mustn’t underestimate the mind’s capacity for overenthusiasm.
Challenge yourself. For someone as competitive as me, the moment the word ‘challenge’ is included in a task, it becomes significantly more attractive.
Give yourself a purpose. It doesn’t need to be something grand; just something you can hold onto, something that keeps you afloat in the changing tides of today. Whether you’re shooting a feature film over Zoom or simply trying to tidy your room, it all gives us the feeling of moving forward.
Laugh. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in my admittedly limited lifetime, it’s that there’s always something to laugh about.
If you’re lucky enough to be with family, think of this as a unique opportunity for bonding. You’re literally all shut in the same house and no matter how much you annoy each other, neither one of you can leave. Find something – a video game, a film series, comic book readings, scrapbooking – that you can do together. The life that we thought we knew is gone now, but quarantine is the perfect time to craft new traditions.
Be kind. So often we scoff at the everyday niceties, at the empty smiles and faceless ‘how are you’s. So often we pale at the thought of ringing a friend we haven’t spoken to in a while. College, to me, now seems unreal, like a dream I had about someone else’s life; so often I wonder whether I should be disturbing my friends, emailing my professors, sharing my experience. I’ve decided to ignore those doubts, though. Physical self-isolation is bad enough. And trust me – if they’re your friends, they will always be happy to hear from you. Especially in a time like this.
No matter what you choose to do, we must all try, at the very least, to be happy. We owe ourselves that much. What’s the other option? To submerge ourselves in misery?
Smile. Smile at the little things. Smile at the silly things. Smile at the absurdity of it all. Because in the world we live in today, we can no longer afford to disparage joy, no matter its size.
Author bio: Zuni Chopra is filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra and film journalist Anupama Chopra’s daughter, and is currently a freshman at Stanford university where she’s studying the creative arts. She has authored three books of poetry and one novel. Through this column, she chronicles her journey as an international student leaving home for the first time to study abroad.
Follow@zuni_chopra on Twitter
From HT Brunch, May 17, 2020
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