Everyone has to face and handle all types of situations in his/her lifetime, and we eventually learn that there are things we can do something about, and others that we can do nothing about. The initial spread of Covid-19 virus falls definitely into the latter category.
Back in March, when Italy was the first European country with a number of Covid-19 cases, we thought we were living a nightmare. It was indeed a nightmare to read the numbers of deaths and infected people rising every day and to feel the threat of an invisible enemy.
Almost everything stopped for three months. We have been forced to stay in our homes, streets were empty and schools, almost all the shops and offices were closed. There were people losing their jobs, people who were not able to buy something to eat or to pay their rent and taxes. Covid-19 was threatening our health and our economy as well. To make the picture even worse, at the beginning it looked like Italy was the only “western country” living this emergency. It soon ran over the entire world.
But somehow life went on for those lucky (and careful) enough to escape the clutches of Covid. While everything outside the door of our homes was quiet, we kept working from inside, adapting to new needs and helping each other. It has been tough, but life went on. It did and it still does now.
Designing our future in these strange times looks harder than ever. How is it possible to think about positive perspectives, when the world is going through such hard times? I think it is challenging but we can definitely do something about it.
We can take this time to discover and embrace our feelings. We can learn to be kind to ourselves. We can appreciate more what we have and where we are. We can be more responsible and take advantage of the free time we have to flourish, focus on our ambitions and cultivate our interests. We could take that music lesson we did not have the time to take before, or follow that online art course that looked so interesting, or spend quality time with our family because we are normally too busy for it. Or we can just sit, listen to good music and know ourselves more.
The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us many lessons. I recently came across a very interesting article[1] which says “the COVID-19 crisis, despite its many sad and horrible implications in terms of sickness and death, is exactly what we needed to galvanise us, to draw us together as one global community, to see more clearly what we are collectively capable of achieving, and to bring into focus what needs to be done globally to secure our future on this planet.”
Covid-19 luckily will not be with us forever, but it is now. Let’s adapt to this new reality, let’s think about new ideas to stay connected, let’s try to build something positive out of it. This can be an important opportunity to grow and change.
Giorgia Scuderi from CESIE (Italy).
[1] “Life after COVID-19: An invitation to reimagine the future”, www.impactinternational.com