Mental Health - Face Off

The concoction of courage and hope is the healing potion for a happy life! We are living in a changing world and to be at par with the changes we are all fighting, fighting battles within and sometimes outside. Someone is fighting poverty, someone is fighting for name, someone is fighting for space, someone is fighting for love.

A 21 year old boy who helps us in the house, works extra hours, to educate his 4 siblings, to help his unemployed father construct a small room (the roof of their hut leaks) and to pay off the debts his father has taken.

My neighbor, a 60 year old lady wakes up with the same zeal everyday to milk her cows, take care of them, to plough her fields and do a lot more because she is the sole bread earner in a house of four - 2 small children and her differently abled husband.

There are so many more people like them, people who fight everyday, who fight for themselves and for their loved ones. I am fighting too, my fight may not seem as big as theirs but in my bungling bird brain, it is big, my fight is to make my tomorrow better than today. Everyday is a challenge, but in these everyday battles I don't want to lose myself. No one would want to. I want to wake up tomorrow, I want to wake up to the sun, to the moon, to the chirping birds, to my mother’s care, to my daughter’s laughter, to my dog’s love… I want to wake up to the world.

The spread of coronavirus has initiated chain reaction of a lot of negative consequences one of them being ‘suicides due to adverse mental health’.

Thought of suicide is hard and complex, but ending up ones life is not a solution to one’s problems. While I was talking to a friend I realized that one of the reasons people feel like giving up is, maybe, when they lose the zeal to fight, when they succumb to the thought of what others think of them, when they succumb to peer pressure. There are times when they stop believing in the power of their dreams, when they stop believing in themselves.

One of the beautiful lines from the poem psalm of life says, “Lives of all great men remind us to make our lives sublime…” so here is my sincere effort to bring to you lives of many great women and men who can guide us in becoming a light for ourselves and for others.