From March to today, our life has completely changed. Nine months in which the world came face to face with the truth of nature. For years, we have kept our eyes closed under the illusion that our running, running, running around in circles was the only possible way to live. But no, March 2020 arrived and suddenly all the peoples of the world found themselves in the same situation. We had to deal with something completely different. And for the first time, differences in religion, nationality, skin color no longer existed. Things have happened, those always hoped for, but basically considered utopia; stories of union, collectivity, hope. Closed in our homes we began to think. A pandemic has made us all equal. With this I absolutely do not want to argue that Covid 19 was a stroke of luck, not at all. But I would like to try to reflect on this completely new situation.
At this point, each of you could object saying to me that throughout history there have been hundreds of epidemics, so there is nothing new and yet I cannot help but think that, if it had happened only ten years ago, school would have stopped completely, smart working would not have been possible for most workers and the only way we would have had to communicate with each other would be by phone or SMS. I argue that this pandemic is a new situation because it has never happened that all the populations of the planet had to face a gigantic problem being able to remain connected to each other.
In the first few months, this equality was felt then, as usually happens, we became different. I have always considered becoming different as abeautiful thing, but you also have to think about how to get there. Anyone who has a sibling, a close friend or a great love knows that at some point, after having shared a lot, we find ourselves changed and often the transformation leads us to take different paths.
This time, however, something happened: many of us faced this new situation with amazement, bewilderment, concern, but then managed to make sense of what was happening. They didn’t close their eyes. Others have not succeeded. They did not understand, they avoided thinking, feeling with their bodies the strong emotions that this situation brought out and in the end they turned away. This has led to protests from people all over the world declaring that the virus does not exist. They are angry and take it out on anyone who tries to bring them back to reality. They want to continue to keep their eyes closed and anyone who faces this situation differently, perhaps with difficulty, but also with intelligence, poses a threat to their blindness. They want to “get back to normal.” They cannot think that normalcy often does not coincide with something good, healthy. Above all, they want to scare and stop everyone else, so that nothing different from before comes out of this crisis. It is no coincidence that the denial movement is ridden by far-right forces that are inherently conservative. How can we not be fooled by these people? It is probably not enough to say: “they are crazy” or “they are stupid”. Indifference can be a good strategy, but it could also make us doubt that we are like them. Then we must keep moving our minds at a time when the movement of our bodies is limited. We must do as at night when the body is motionless in the dark while the mind dreams. Perhaps by doing so, when we wake up in the morning, we can imagine a new life.
Gioia Piazzi
Thanks to Ray Williams for the translation of this article.
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