It is a time of profound and immediate change – we have all had to surrender our individual liberties in the best interests of everyone. It has been an enormous challenge to adapt to the new way of life – innocent people on a self-imposed house interest to protect us from an invisible but deadly threat. Many movies have been made about deadly strains of bacteria and civilisation threatening viruses but none of them have come close to what each of us has experienced over the last few months.
The majority of us have had to stay in our homes which has required us to spend more time on our own or more time with those people that we are closest to. Being in lockdown may have brought us closer to our loved ones than before. Communication that we took for granted has now become increasingly important. The connections and friendships that we have with others have become ever more valuable in their absence – we make great efforts to stay in touch when in other times we might not have bothered.
With social isolation the main defence against a deadly contagion – the way that we affect one another – even when two meters apart becomes not just more apparent but possibly a matter of life and death. No longer can we pretend that we are not in this life together – that our actions, choices and behaviours impact only ourselves. Our shared connections to each other are more precious and more strained than ever, the impact we can have on one another is now more undeniable than ever before, we are interdependent, the world is one in the face of this adversity and common threat.
Whatever happens when this crisis inevitably passes, the importance of our community, the compassion that we have for each other and the appreciation for the role that those who put other's wellbeing before their own, will hopefully not fade into obscurity. The possibility of a better, more humane future lies before us, the opportunity to enable a more beautiful, cleaner world to come to fruition opens up to us. From this terrible blight – good things might yet come.
Kevin Borodwicz
