Nature’s Pendulum swings back at humans, in the form of a virus
A different look at Coronavirus by Raffael Morelli, Italian psychiatrist and psychotherapist
I believe that the cosmos has its own way of rebalancing things and its own laws, when these are upset.
The moment we’re living in, full of anomalies and paradoxes, makes us think…
At a time when climate change caused by environmental disasters has reached worrying levels, first China, and then so many other countries, are being forced into a stalemate.
The economy is collapsing, and thus pollution is decreasing dramatically.
The air is getting better; you use a mask, and thus you breathe….
At a historical moment when, all over the world, certain discriminatory ideologies and policies are being reactivated, reminding us of a petty past, a virus is coming, which makes us experience that, in an instant, we too can become discriminated against, the segregated, those who are blocked at the borders, who bring diseases.
Even if we have nothing to do with it… Even if we are white, westerners and travel first class….
…in a society based on productivity and consumption, in which we all run 14 hours. Day after day we don’t know why, without Saturday or Sunday, without any more breaks in the calendar, all of a sudden the “stop” arrives. All of a sudden we are all at a standstill, at home, for days and days.
We all stop, at home, for days and days. We have to count the time that we have lost the value of, as soon as it is no longer measurable in money, in profit.
Do we even know what to do with it yet?
At a time when the education of our own children, by force of circumstance, is often delegated to various figures and institutions, the virus is closing schools and forcing us to find alternative solutions, to reunite mothers and fathers with their own children. It forces us to rebuild “a family”.
In a dimension where relationships, communication, sociability, are essentially played out in this non-space of virtual social networks, giving us the illusion of closeness, the virus takes away the closeness, which is very real; no one should touch each other, no kisses, no hugs, no distance, in the cold of non-contact.
Since when have we taken these gestures and their meaning for granted?
In a social climate where thinking of oneself has become the rule, the virus sends us a clear message: the only way out is reciprocity, a sense of belonging, of community, of feeling part of something greater, something to be taken care of, something that can take care of us.
Shared responsibility, feeling that our actions depend not only on our own fate, but on the fate of others, of all those around us? And that we depend on them.
So, if we stop the witch-hunt, if we stop to ask ourselves whose fault it is and why all this happened, and instead ask ourselves what we can learn, I think we all have a lot to think about and act on, because with the cosmos and its laws, obviously, we have an excessive debt… It reminds us of this at great cost, with a virus!
