Someday everything will make perfect sense. So, for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the tears, and enjoy life’s small joys while waiting for the big ones to come.
Referring to this time as a difficult one is an eufenism…
I am writing from Naples, in the South of Italy where the pandemic outbreak has arrived in all its devastation. I am a biologist with a PhD in Infectious diseases; I am here by chance and by a similar mysterious game orchestrated by fate, I got “trapped” in the esponentially escalation of the outbreak – experiencing first hand this catastrophe and witnessing a time that will be remembered in human history.
An outbreak as challenging as unprecedented: for the first time in history, the entire world is experiencing a synchronised moment of adversity; not anymore an individual, private, regional or national prospective, but a collective and global one, TOGETHER in the same struggle. The world, forced to look at itself as ONE: one people, one pain, one catastrophe; no more borders, race, religion, narrow-minded, self-entered thoughts, but united as ONENESS in our pain.
Do you want to know how it feels being in Italy during these days?
It’s hard and painful!
It’s a sudden change that we are obliged to understand, accept and respect in the short term for a longer term benefit. And yet, we are not used to act in light of a long term vision- see climate changes, nature loss, economic model, political leadership around the world driven by a self-centred mindset.
We are requested not just to learn and embrace a new outlook, but also to act on it through our behaviour. The cherry on the cake is feeling deprived of the most precious human right, freedom.
There is resistance in people, understandably. And yet, our personal struggle must not prevent us from making the required shift.
The streets are crowded by police, army, red cross, ambulances, ‘carabinieri’ and ‘Guardia di finanza, spanning the street to catch the deceivers, and to bring people to the hospitals.
The few instances I am out for necessity, my heart breaks up a little more; my eyes fill with tears beyond my control, an unmanageable sense of emptiness pervade the soul. When I see someone on the street walking in my direction, I now step away to create that “painful” distance for safety. Without mentioning the anguish when at 6pm every day, I listen to the live update of the number of deaths and new infected: an overwhelming count of bodies left without proper burial (no room in cemeteries) and without family nearby.
And yet, I am urged to say that “my condition” is not even close to those having someone dear locked in a crowded hospital, to medical staff having to choose which patient to put in intensive care where space is rationed, or to the elderly at home failing to navigate this chaos on their own.
‘Acceptance’: I achieved deep awareness about the global scenario ahead as one not to be underestimated.
So for now, I honour days during this extreme period of quarantine: I wake up in the morning and I stand by the balcony to fill my eyes with the soothing reflection of the sun over the sea, and Mount Vesuvius scenery. I explore the true sense of being alive and guide my body to embrace an unfamiliar joy.
Furthermore,
…how many times were you dreaming to sleep in, a little longer, hoping you didn’t have to go to the office?
…how many times were you wishing to have more occasions to read a book, call a friend, connect with family, talk to your children or just spend quality time with your parents?
I spend nowdays my time, embracing a different freedom, the one allowing me to choose… if reading, working on my laptop, sitting in the sun on the balcony, watching TV, lying on bed and daydreaming, connecting to the world through social media, blogging my emotions, checking on my parents, talking to friends, singing with others from neighbouring balconies in small glimpses of solidarity.
At the very beginning, running was still allowed and I had the chance to witness a silence, that has never been so loud.
This is Via Caracciolo, one of the most panoramic coastline with plenty of hotels, bars and restaurants, that I never ever seen so deserted.
Nearly forgot to tell you about food shopping: it is allowed as long as the number of people is controlled and contained inside the shop. If before buying food was an easy and quick task, it has now become a test of patiente. In the best case scenario, there is a long queue keeping you wait on the street for at least 30mins.
When inside, it becomes a distressing experience: trying to avoid people next to you, picking stuff from the same shelf.
Ignorance here is the real issue; lack of information and understanding drives people to treat this pandemic as a flu. Elderly people tend to maintain their routine without wanting to change (careless to die or via a fatalistic approach). Younger generations are inclined to tag others as crazy for over reacting; their sense of “superiority” put them and us at high risk. They will come right next to you, as they don’t comply with the ‘nonsense’ of social distancing.
There is denial, confusion and fear even more visible in a population whose the social aspect of life is at the pillar of its culture (i.e. Italy, Spain).
Bottom line is that nobody should complain about a quarantine, feeling undoubtedly as “forced detention”. It is a privilege to be safe while many others are fighting a worse battle, the one for survival; while other governments around the world are still underestimating the threat putting their people at risk.
The bigger picture
I would like now to take you onto a more challenging journey, if you follow me while I zoom out to look at the big picture.
WHAT DO WE DISCOVER?
The entire world is collapsing over an invisible particle of 0.125 microns, which is 1/1000000th of a meter just to give you an idea.
How daunting is this truth for our mental capacity?
…for a human race that think of itself as invincible, with the power to rule natural ecosystems dynamics, manage calamities, revert to nuclear weapons in name of the only God it worships: money.
From the evolutionary point of view, we have reached our current level of power and control over the world because of intelligence. However, the society-changing technological revolution hasn’t been proportional to the growth of our abilities to ensure a responsible and beneficial partnership between us and our intelligence.
My “decoding”
We have been giving warnings and signals of potential disastrous scenarios that could impact and completely change our life on earth; think about floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, other diseases outbreaks that have killed and regularly kill thousands of people; think about the increasing phenomenon of mass migration putting a strain onto many geographies, and linked to unliveable conditions and extenuating circumstances we contributed to create for keeping power in the hands of few. Think about terrorism, and people blowing themselves up to cause collective damage.
What have we done?
How much harm have we caused to our world?
We have been all thinking business, profitability, money, in a distorted and misleading persuasion that if business is profitable, it will take care of us!!!
Really?
…when one of the first thing businesses did, is increasing masks and sanitisers prices by using this crisis as an opportunity to make money…
…when the idea of globalisation became a boomerang, and instead of demolished walls, and barriers, built boundaries to keep precious health supplies and medical machines within borders. Who cares about others facing the worse struggle, right?!
Lets talk sustainability now. The frequency of disease outbreaks has been increasing steadily. Between 1980 and 2013 there were 12,012 recorded outbreaks, comprising 44 million individual cases in the world. High levels of global travel, trade and connectivity, and high-density living have contributed to this rise – but the links to climate change and biodiversity are the most striking.
Deforestation has increased steadily over the past two decades and is linked to 31% of outbreaks such as Ebola, and the Zika and Nipah viruses. More broadly, climate change has altered and accelerated the transmission patterns of infectious diseases such as Zika, malaria and dengue fever, and has caused human displacement (mentioned earlier). Movements of large groups to new locations, often under poor conditions, increases displaced populations’ vulnerability to biological threats such as measles, malaria, diarrheal diseases and acute respiratory infections. And again, the past 20 years of disease outbreaks could be viewed as a series of near-miss catastrophes, which have led to complacency rather than an increased vigilance necessary to control outbreaks. More of those repeating signals and signs that we are failing to decipher.
COVID19
The changes involved with this outbreak on the other hand, have been sudden, driven by widespread recognition that it’s a public health emergency. We are seing few governments acting, and people changing their behaviour, in a very short amount of time-that is in reality, what the climate emergency has been requiring governments and people to do for years in the face of a different kind of threat. Once again, public health strictly correlates with profits and losses, whereas climate does not (in our short term vision).
The coronavirus is our test; it is the most iconic global challenge and our last chance to rethink undoubtedly our principles, values and shared humanity.
We are being tested on the same values we have ignored for decades: the human being.
For the first time, economy is severely intertwined with people health. It’s not possible to ignore people dying for two main reasons: it’s happening next door to our families (rather than in distant lands…Syria, Amazonia, Africa, and so on), it is demolishing our entire economic model.
For the first time, public health correlates to the health of the most marginalised members of the community. Preventing the spread of this virus requires outreach to all, with an equitable access to treatment. This challenge also implies overcoming systemic biases based on income, gender, geography, race and ethnicity, religion or social status. Migrants and refugees – regardless of their formal status – must be an integral part of national systems and plans for tackling the virus.
For the first time, global leaders are required to put economic growth second in favour of people lives. They are forced to choose between money and people. If in previous situations, it was an easier trade off to make (see lack climate efforts), this is a tougher one, as the personal ethic comes into play combined with a world watching live every decision made .
That subtle “Irony” behind the design of our destiny…do you start to see it?!
How is it humanly possible that the example of escalation in China and Italy and the developed scientific evidence are not yet a sufficient motivator to push all other countries at implementing the same restrictions?
Those inactions are the symptoms of an infected society that choose economy over the human being; these leaders are failing their test, and they will be accountable for prolonging our painful collective journey.
They will have to take the consequences when the situation goes out of hand, while innocent people will pay the price for their complacence.
During this time, the true color of politicians, businesses will strike the eyes of the wide public around the world. Like those Italian leaders, part of the opposite coalition, shamefully busy at contrasting the government in power rather than supporting its decisions with dignity and emotional intelligence.
The paradox: the law of Contrapasso
I am extremely glad to be in Italy: I feel safer and proud of the Italian authorities acting with both, rigour and empathy. I would never have imagined that I will feel more secure and protected here than in Switzerland, where I have been living for the past 12 years.
A sad “diagnostic” of a sick society, much earlier than COVID19’s appearance.
Do you see the analogy between our destiny and what Dante write magnificently in “La Divina Commedia“?
This is exactly what it describes in hell, talking about the “law of contrapasso“.
Contrapasso is one of the few rules in Dante’s Inferno, a “law of nature” stating that for every sinner’s crime there must be an equal and fitting punishment. In Dante’s poem, punishments must arise from the crime itself, not from the damage it has caused. The “Contrappasso” seems to be applied to us for contrast, as for the guesses, punished in the fourth bolgia of the eighth Circle (Inferno XX): they had the presumption in life to look ahead in the future and in the afterlife, according to a “Contrappasso” for contrast, they are forced to walk backwards with the face turned back towards the back.
In a similar fashion, we are now forced to be united, to show solidarity, to join forces, to prioritise human value over money, to act promptly and synergistically as one human race – that is our punishment for contrast to our established “business as usual” approach. And yet, we are still given a chance to fix our sinful behaviour in this life.
COVID19 is probably just the announce of a permanent, ongoing new war characterising our era, and preparing us for the biggest change in the history of life on Earth. If we fail to pass this critical test, there may not be a future ahead. If we fail to read in between the web of events, and fail to reset our operating system, this time may be remembered as the greatest opportunity humanity missed. Business as usual won’t exist anymore as well as old-fashioned leaders functioning by default. It’s the time to reset our values altogether and change our “operating system”.
Not just leaders, but all of us will face their own test commensurate to their own capacity: we will have to get used to living with fewer possessions and travelling less, as the virus disrupts global supply chains and transportation networks.
Nevertheless, the human psyche is resistant and the virus has taken decisionmaking out of our hands. We are unable to doing things without rushing, waiting for answers, searching for solutions and making money. Shelves are empty of food and will soon be empty of clothes, phones, shoes, unnecessary stuff and medical supplies. People stop moving around, stop going out, stop spending, stop going on holiday, stop going to cultural events, even to church.
We will have to learn how to be happy just with our used dress, reading a forgotten book, cooking up a new recipe and discovering the little things. We will be forced into slowing down the pace, refusing to take planes, working from our homes, entertaining only amongst close friends or family, learning to become self-sufficient and mindful. Suddenly the thought of future projects is vague and uncertain: does it even matter?
There isn’t any cure for this: the best way to survive is to use the time as an opportunity to pick up the pieces and reinvent ourself and the world where we live.
Only then, we may deserve hugs, kisses and “freedom” back; and it is then that we will truly appreciate the beauty of a true hug, exchanged with the heart.
“Human Innovation“
Along with ‘technological innovation’ we need “human innovation”. We need emphasis and focus to create the next level of being human, the way we design our own futures. Businesses need to step back and ask themselves: are we solving the right problem? Is there a better problem definition that will more likely result in benefits to humanity?
Leaders need to be role models in creativity, invention, improvisation, empathy, ethics, emotions, social connections and intuition among other human attributes, before being experts in economy, strategy and finance.
We need to rethink capitalism that fails to make us secure, as clearly shown by the events. We need to rethink business role in society, and redefine us as human being!
Hopefully, the striking number of lives yet to come, won’t die in vain as the world will strive to resurrect human dignity and survival.
I would like to end with a positive message from us, Italians to the rest of the world, intended as a wake up call for all.
There is freedom in this path of generosity and greater pain in the path of scarcity and fear.
Social distancing does not mean social isolation.
Be kind.
Be safe.
