Coronavirus Diaries
What did you do when the world slowed down?
It's time to get to know ourselves a little better.
Authored by Chiara Sciandra in Italian. This is a translation.
It’s been exactly 53 days since the world slowed down.
Normality is not that normal anymore; we can’t meet the people who intersperse our world. Friends, parents, fiancés, everybody is abandoned to self-isolation and solitude. Maybe then, those are the true lessons which need to be heeded in order to fight this virus; to feel good within oneself, get to know yourself better, and understand the mistakes that we as a society have made up to this point. The lives that we lived until now … it wasn’t living. It was just consuming.
At the beginning of this lockdown in Mondovi, it was difficult to stay at home and get used to it, because I always had a hectic life, with thousands of commitments, thousands of thoughts, thousands of things that I wanted to manage all at once. I liked it. Now, I’m spending my life trapped between four walls, just like a tiger in a cage. I compare myself a lot with the tiger because it cannot free himself despite his strength and his desire to fight for his own liberty.
Whilst this tragedy has given us much to ponder, I am fully convinced that the way of life for billions of people is changing. All of us have lived through these troubled times very differently. For me, I would have liked to be near the families who lost family members because of this tragedy. To lose a loved one is so destructive for a person. And I know how it feels to lose someone.
The dehumanization of so many has been hard to bear. There are those in Italy who do not even have a coffin, or a final resting place where their loved ones can go to remember them. Death comes to us all and when it does I believe we would all want to be laid to rest in a place where people can remember us. Yet here, there are none.
Globally, the industrialised North and the poverty stricken South are trying to fight against this invisible enemy together. Providing technology, medical care and equipment to those ill-equipped to confront this virus. And yet, each nation has become insular. I suppose that was expected given the nature of this global health crisis and yet countries like Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iran and others are all in the same boat as us and yet aren’t receiving the necessary help. COVID19 has turned our lives upside down. Our passions, our devotions, our hopes and dreams shattered in an instant. Yet the world is breathing. The world is recovering. It might not be anything to shout about given the enormous burden on society and on countless livelihoods, but carbon emissions are down 8%! Mother Nature is reclaiming its rightful place in the world and taking back what we humans destroyed. Thanks to this, we may have just lengthened the life of the world.
Just for a second, what did you do before the world slowed down? Humanity continued to cough up all the plastic particles, smog, dust, carbon dioxide and toxic gases that hung in the air. War and conflict continued apace. Protests and revolutionary struggles raged on. Today would have been just another working day. Thursday 30 April would be another seemingly insignificant day on most of our calendars. We would have trudged to our jobs, solved problems related to our jobs, bought an expensive coffee or tea, endured our bosses and their ideas and gone home only to be stressed out by it all. We were addicted to everything and appreciating nothing.
When the world slowed down, I was scared, scared of not being able to return to my life, to the laughs of my friends, to the vibrancy of the people I know in Mondovi and Turin. I was scared of not being able to feel alive. But above all, scared that all this would no longer allow us to love. In all its nuances. But now that the world has slowed down, it’s given us time to embrace and appreciate all the beautiful elements of life that make us happy. It’s given us time to love again. What did you do when the world slowed down?
