They say that when this is all over, we will be better. That the impact of the pandemic will make us offer our best face as individuals and, also, as a society. The displays of solidarity are repeated consecutively like an incessant trickle.
The same occurs with generosity in those who, at the base, are detached. This experience will serve for many people to have an important learning point, in terms of valuing the simple things in life. Now, in most cases, this increased sensitivity will exist for a few months, until we feel totally safe. As the uncertainty continues, people will have a better attitude, more sensitive, more generous and more collaborative.
In general, at the moment when this apparently happens, many will forget what happened and return to their usual habits. In situations like this, leadership should be scientific, not political. Let's trust that society begins to relativize, to enjoy the little things that fill our hearts day by day.
We cannot romanticize anything from a pandemic with thousands of deaths, but we can learn a lot. It is necessary to stop and think about what has happened, how we have responded and how to face the future at all levels. We must realize the real needs and even the habits of unnecessary consumption. The real question is whether we want to return to the previous normality or take advantage of this moment to create models of life that are more worth living.
If we use love and intellect, we will be able to create something new, that will leave us its ground and that we will be able to handle. If not, we will have to see how to manage what we are living, because there is something that we are not going to
return. Life will go on, but there are different losses that we will have to face.
New things will be born, but right now we are in uncertainty and we are afraid because we do not know what will come next. The resources in which we were installed have been shocked and it will be an unexplored path, new and together.
This "together" happens, to face the situation by generating common social systems that put life at the center, without letting ourselves be carried away by individualism and "every man for himself". The pandemic has blown up all the seams of the system and has put us as a society in front of a mirror. We are being able to observe those jobs that are fundamental for the development of social -and economic- life, and which, coincidentally, are precarious and, for the most part, poorly paid.
We go through moments of overflowing anxiety, so it is recurrent to see how, in addition to closing ourselves off, we also close ourselves.
So it is necessary to remember that nothing happens if we are not well, if we cannot be creative and productive (like everyone else on Instagram). But, without haste, when we can, if we want to take care of ourselves, we are going to have to look within, ask ourselves and decompose this experience that, although it is shared, each of us is living it in a unique way.
If I am sincere, I have no idea how we will come out as citizens, because each person has to decide, has to reflect and choose one way or another. What I would like is for the balance to tip to try to be good, sensitive, socially conscious people, creators of humanity and committed to alleviating human suffering, to defending ecosystems.
The decision is in our hands, in our hearts, if I want a cooperative, collaborative society that seeks happiness and savors life, not consumerist or hedonistic, a society that covers the basic needs of each person, not a society of the productivity and absurd growth. We have to choose knowing that what the majority choose, even if it is the option to be worse, will set our course without learning anything about what we are experiencing.
We have to choose, which way do you choose? Are we going to be better or worse? I think we will have enough with being. We are going to have to re-establish trust in ourselves (in ourselves and in others) and that is not going to be easy. Or go to Sophocles: "The most beautiful human work is to be useful to others".
Juan Legaz Palomares.
