Nothing was more important to us than stuff. By “stuff,” I don’t necessarily mean objects or accessories, but everything that distinguishes us from others, that makes us special, unique. When Covid came, it locked us up in our homes, made us virtually invisible, or rather, visible only virtually, and rendered almost all our “stuff” meaningless. But since we can’t live without values, because then we’re no different from animals, we’ve started to develop new ones. Now, gradually, as we are compelled to give up on the pleasure of getting respect and admiration as we learn to enjoy positive, reciprocal connections with others.
The atmosphere in the streets and in the media may be the complete opposite, but there are undercurrents paving the way to a new reality. The war on the outside marks the final breaths of the old world, where each one was for oneself.
No beginning is easy, and certainly not the beginning of a new reality. But the sooner we realize that we cannot go back, not now and not ever, the quicker and easier will be the transition. The old values have brought us competition, corruption, exploitation, and pollution. They caused depression, obsession, alienation, and isolation. They also brought us the coronavirus, which is finally killing them one by one.
Suddenly, we must think of other people, and they of us. In the process, we are discovering how good it is to communicate rather than to compete, to give and receive rather than to take and give up, and to connect rather than to alienate.
Those who are currently fighting for their own rights will lose. Those who are fighting to unite everyone above all the differences and all the hardships will triumph. Perhaps not in person, but the way of connection will defeat the way of separation; it is simply that the time for it has come.