The Box within a Box: Isolating Ourselves from the Coronavirus

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON MARCH 17, 2020

What do we do when the world suddenly starts standing still?  What do we do when our box suddenly becomes smaller and smaller until it’s just you, in a room, in your head?  What do we do when we have time to stop and smell the roses?

Our Government wants us to socially distance ourselves from other people and self-isolate.  It’s all quite understandable really, this virus is rapidly spreading around the globe and needs to be contained.  We do this by not giving it anywhere to go, we suffocate it.  It dies out and we all go back to our lives the way they were before.  Problem solved?

We still must do something with our time after we’ve watched all we can watch on Netflix.  Isolation for some people is stress-free, a respite of time between the chaos of life in this modern world.  For others, isolation is a challenge because there might be an absence of distractions that ‘everyday’ life provides.

We are all submerged deep into a ubiquitous consumer culture where we all are chasing dreams that commercials hypnotized us to believe in.  The Coronavirus has lifted the veil of society and has exposed all its working parts for what they are.  Much in the same way Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz did, or Neo at the end of The Matrix.  The fabric that holds society and its structures together has been torn, exposing a weakness that greatly disturbs our fragile sense of security.    

Now we are all in a self-imposed form of solitary confinement, while our leaders scramble to kill this virus.  Our part is to stay calm and get out of the way.  Society has always overseen our mental programming, where most of us don’t know how to work it on our own.  We are marooned with our own thoughts and possibly a stranger looking back at us in the mirror.

This is the true virus that COVID – 19 has infected us all with.  Most of us don’t know ourselves because we’ve been always living the dreams of the Privileged, the true owners of it all.  We’ve been so distracted with TV, mobile phones, game show elections, and 40-hours a week unending jobs, that we haven’t really been able to stop and see through the facade of society.  Our ‘purposes’ have been suspended and what’s left is the fear of the unknown, and we hate the things we fear.

When will this be over?  When will I get my life back?  Will I be bankrupt when all is said and done?  This is what the ‘hell of isolation’ can feed the brain while it's kept in a box.  So how do we look on the brighter side of things without deluding ourselves?  The world is going to change one way or another because of this global shutdown.  Take this time while looking at those four walls and think, self-examine, and then re-imagine the possibilities of what our change can bring back to the world.