Pilar Velilla
To paraphrase the enthusiastic and successful speaker Victor Küppers, “we
go through life like headless chickens”.
Stress and day-to-day tasks make us unaware of life itself. And in this way
we do not appreciate the beauty of each day. We are either distressed about
the future to come or frustrated with the past we didn’t enjoy enough.
With this scenario, surely more than one of us has come to wish that the
world would stop, to take a break and slow down.
And, to everyone’s surprise, the world stopped.
It’s surprising that a microscopic being, a virus, has been capable of so
many things: stopping the economy, slowing tourism, putting the whole world
in danger… to name just a few visible effects.
We never imagined that something like this could happen. But it has
happened and now it is our turn to face this reality.
There have been many interpretations about what the Covid-19 has meant in
our lives. But I would like to assess, in a more personal way, what this
virus has taught my family.
First of all, it has relocated our home. Many times we go through life in a
hurry and don’t pay attention to that place that welcomes us and makes us
rest. With the lockdown we said goodbye to our commitments and stayed at
home for 24 hours, directing our gaze to the place we live in. And we
returned to savor the simplest things, which are precisely those that make
a home: cooking, DIY, cleaning, decorating…
Secondly, it told us that, despite the problems, one is always able to open
oneself and give oneself to others. We have seen this in a multitude of
very good initiatives, from making aprons and masks for doctors and nurses
to doing the shopping for our elderly neighbor.
As a third point, we have come to the conclusion that equality is important
but much more so is common responsibility; in which both members of the
couple collaborate to the maximum and give themselves to the family,
without calculations or absurd rivalries. That is generosity at 1000%.
In fourth place, we have received the lesson that we should appreciate more
our friends and relatives. The mask has been the key: we must look into
each other’s eyes again and learn to smile to them. And put into practice
active listening, because many times the screens around us distract us.
In fifth place, after being deprived of the sacraments and church going, we
have learned that we must put effort in our faith. Perhaps we went to the
Sunday mass distracted or perhaps we attended it routinely. It doesn’t
matter. The conclusion is that we have to live every moment with the Lord
with the same emotion of the first time.
In educational matters, the learning has been double. On the one hand, we
have been more aware than ever that we parents are the first educators. The
experience of online classes has been very hard, but, and so I connect with
the second lesson, how we now value the teachers!
Seventhly, we have been given a wake-up call on environmental issues. This
virus has managed to stop the pollution and lower the contamination to
levels we haven’t had for a long time. If the Covid-19 has been able to do
it, so can we. The crux is to propose small gestures that have a direct
impact on the health of our planet.
The next thing the virus has taught us is the value of truth. Hoaxes or
fake news have circulated all over the planet, and in a situation like this
we have appreciated the true news, without sensationalism, but with real
information. I also wrote about this in this
post.
The elderly and disabled people occupy the ninth place. They are not
disposable, they are indispensable. First, because they are our legacy and,
secondly, because they teach us how to really love. In this crisis, with
the situation in nursing homes, these people have been the ones who have
suffered the most. As a society we must do examination and see what
measures we will have to apply so that this does not happen again.
And lastly and tenthly, we have learned to value human virtues and how they
help building family peace. Sometimes it has been very difficult to live
together, and putting into practice values such as patience or temperance
has been a miraculous remedy to achieve a more joyful and happy
environment.
