A piece of a whole

Quarantine day #45. It’s been now 45 days since I taught my last class in a room with students. 45 days going out only for the essentials or for a short walk. 45 days with almost any live social interaction outside my home. 

Without a doubt, this pandemic is bringing changes to a whole generation. This is expressed in the sentence that we have been listening to a lot lately: “these are unprecedented times”. 

They REALLY ARE.

There will probably be no “back to normal” after all this has passed. Or at least not the “normal” as we used to know. A lot will change along the way until we can have a social life again. I’m not saying that we won’t be able to be safe in the same room breathing and practicing our yoga. Or that we won’t be able to hug and kiss and shake hands.

We will do all of it again, of that I don’t have a doubt. But it will definitely be a lot different than before in many ways, especially on HOW IT WILL FEEL.

Every walk on the street, every sunset by the river sitting on the grass, every picnic with friends, every birthday party, every bicycle ride with the kids, every day in the office with colleagues, every (real) live school, yoga, dance, pilates, boxing classes, every weight lifted in the gym, every live concert, theater play, live ballet, every face to face eye contact with our loved ones, every handshake, every hug, every kiss. Every human relation will have a different meaning. Never the saying that you only know the value of something when it’s gone made this much sense.

And from this new significance of life as social beings, I hope we value each other as equals. I hope we look into each other’s eyes and see ourselves. I hope we are more compassionate. I hope we finally understand that we are a small cell in a bigger organism called Earth and that we all work together to make it function well. And that when a part of it doesn’t work as it should, it will, in one way or another, affect us all. And I hope we finally realize that it’s our job, all together, to work in order to heal it.