It's day 23.
Or at least I believe so, I am not sure. It is difficult to day how much time has passed, sometimes it seems like it was a year, sometimes like it was just two days. They say that the quarantine will probably go on until after Easter (so mid-April), and even then a lot of restrictions will still be in order.
Life is slowly passing by, and sometimes, in the quietness of the apartment, it is easy to forget what is going on outside. Building a routine definetely helped me in balancing my mental health and making these empty days productive. I wake up, do yoga, clean up the house, eat, attend some online classes
to which I applied to put something new on my curriculum, do some more yoga, eat again and go to sleep. I also watch a lot of movies and tv shows, and I gave myself the goal to learn something new everyday. It seems I can live through the apocalypse in a much better way than I usually live my day-by-day life.
We all need some sort of glue to keep our lives together in a moment where it seems nothing is really "normal" anymore.
There is no normality anywhere in the world at the moment, of this I am sure. Italy and Spain are the two countries that, at the moment, have been hit in the hardest way by the virus. Soon it will probably be someone else to pay the toll of politics putting the economy and their ego ahead of their people's security and health. Day after day, all we can talk about is the virus and how it is affecting every single aspect of our lives. They talk about nothing else on television, and when we started to see a flection in the curve of contagions you could almost hear a collective sigh of relief coming from all over the country. The atmosphere, though, is still quite grim as you can imagine - the numbers of deaths is still high, way too high.
Luckily, we Italians have a secret weapon that helps us going through these difficult times: our sense of humour. It may sound weird to foreigners, but we do have a good sense of humour and we often use irony as a device to get through hard situations. We may not be as satirical as the French, or as comical as the British, but we do have a way around words and a play on impressions that make us deconstruct dangers and main characters in our social and cultural life.
For example, nowadays the internet is overwhelmed by funny videos, jokes and memes about the quarantine. Making fun of situations is a way of owning them, of not letting them control our life; it is, I believe, the same process that hides behind political satire: making fun of a politician, for example, makes them more human and gives us some power back. It is not accidental that satire is, in fact, the artistic form that dictatorships dislike the most.
As more countries are starting to adopt the same measure as us, more jokes and memes are crowding the internet. Sharing jokes about this situation, sending them to people we know and whom may laugh with us, is a way we found to build a community despite not being allowed to be together. In times of hardship, it is natural for a social animal like humans to look for people who share a similar vision of the world; in this situation, we had to form bonds through the internet and these went over the national borders. Once again, the virus showed us how deeply connected (and similar) we are, despite our different nationalities and cultures.
Italians realized they are part of a national community during these weeks, as it usually happens when an emergency strikes a nation or a much smaller region. Communities always strenghten their ties in difficult times, as only collaborating and helping each other the social texture can survive. At first, we looked for others on balconies, singing and dancing; then we showed support to the medical and sanitary staff, and to all those who are still working for us; finally, we turned to our last resort - humour - to build a social glue. Some say it is disrespectful of those suffering, and it may be true - laughing in this situation can be seen as superficial. I believe though that this is also a way to empower ourselves, to turn the situation around and bring some lightness in our lives when we most need it. In the same way, we humanized the two political figure who are now in charge and whom we trust the most - Giuseppe Conte, the Prime Minister, and Sergio Mattarella, the President of our Republic - to make them feel closer to us, using them as a tool to create a national community.
In wars, the most important feature that a good leader must have is being charismatic. Everything else, from being a good politician to being a strategist, may come later, but their charisma is fundamental. We may not be at war, but we do need a strong figure to lead us out of this crisis; Giuseppe Conte is not what I picture when I think of a charismatic man, but, at least, he is empathetic. In a sad and tragic time like this, having a Prime Minister who, at least in his speeches, puts human lives in front of the economy, is like a breath of fresh air. The society was looking for a leader to hold on to, and he was a good candidate for the role. Differently from the aggressive behaviours adopted by Boris Johnson, Donald Trump or Bolsonaro, or from the cold, institutional communication led by Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, the quiet, kind figures of Conte and Mattarella took us by hand and are, for some Italians, a small confort in a troubled period.
In conclusion, social glues are important during a crisis - they help people feeling part of a community, they give some hope. The philosopher Blaise Pascal in the XVII century described the phenomenon of the "divertissement", a distraction from everyday's problems produced by games, philosophical discussions, anything that helped men thinking about something different from their daily issues. In our case, humour became our divertissement. Each society will find one during this pandemic, for others might be something else. On a personal level, too, is important for us to find a divertissement and ties that will help us mantaining our relationships or passions. We are lucky that, today, thanks to the internet we are just a few clicks away from anyone and anything.
Life is slowly passing by, and sometimes, in the quietness of the apartment, it is easy to forget what is going on outside. Building a routine definetely helped me in balancing my mental health and making these empty days productive. I wake up, do yoga, clean up the house, eat, attend some online classes
to which I applied to put something new on my curriculum, do some more yoga, eat again and go to sleep. I also watch a lot of movies and tv shows, and I gave myself the goal to learn something new everyday. It seems I can live through the apocalypse in a much better way than I usually live my day-by-day life.
We all need some sort of glue to keep our lives together in a moment where it seems nothing is really "normal" anymore.
There is no normality anywhere in the world at the moment, of this I am sure. Italy and Spain are the two countries that, at the moment, have been hit in the hardest way by the virus. Soon it will probably be someone else to pay the toll of politics putting the economy and their ego ahead of their people's security and health. Day after day, all we can talk about is the virus and how it is affecting every single aspect of our lives. They talk about nothing else on television, and when we started to see a flection in the curve of contagions you could almost hear a collective sigh of relief coming from all over the country. The atmosphere, though, is still quite grim as you can imagine - the numbers of deaths is still high, way too high.
Luckily, we Italians have a secret weapon that helps us going through these difficult times: our sense of humour. It may sound weird to foreigners, but we do have a good sense of humour and we often use irony as a device to get through hard situations. We may not be as satirical as the French, or as comical as the British, but we do have a way around words and a play on impressions that make us deconstruct dangers and main characters in our social and cultural life.
For example, nowadays the internet is overwhelmed by funny videos, jokes and memes about the quarantine. Making fun of situations is a way of owning them, of not letting them control our life; it is, I believe, the same process that hides behind political satire: making fun of a politician, for example, makes them more human and gives us some power back. It is not accidental that satire is, in fact, the artistic form that dictatorships dislike the most.
As more countries are starting to adopt the same measure as us, more jokes and memes are crowding the internet. Sharing jokes about this situation, sending them to people we know and whom may laugh with us, is a way we found to build a community despite not being allowed to be together. In times of hardship, it is natural for a social animal like humans to look for people who share a similar vision of the world; in this situation, we had to form bonds through the internet and these went over the national borders. Once again, the virus showed us how deeply connected (and similar) we are, despite our different nationalities and cultures.
Italians realized they are part of a national community during these weeks, as it usually happens when an emergency strikes a nation or a much smaller region. Communities always strenghten their ties in difficult times, as only collaborating and helping each other the social texture can survive. At first, we looked for others on balconies, singing and dancing; then we showed support to the medical and sanitary staff, and to all those who are still working for us; finally, we turned to our last resort - humour - to build a social glue. Some say it is disrespectful of those suffering, and it may be true - laughing in this situation can be seen as superficial. I believe though that this is also a way to empower ourselves, to turn the situation around and bring some lightness in our lives when we most need it. In the same way, we humanized the two political figure who are now in charge and whom we trust the most - Giuseppe Conte, the Prime Minister, and Sergio Mattarella, the President of our Republic - to make them feel closer to us, using them as a tool to create a national community.
In wars, the most important feature that a good leader must have is being charismatic. Everything else, from being a good politician to being a strategist, may come later, but their charisma is fundamental. We may not be at war, but we do need a strong figure to lead us out of this crisis; Giuseppe Conte is not what I picture when I think of a charismatic man, but, at least, he is empathetic. In a sad and tragic time like this, having a Prime Minister who, at least in his speeches, puts human lives in front of the economy, is like a breath of fresh air. The society was looking for a leader to hold on to, and he was a good candidate for the role. Differently from the aggressive behaviours adopted by Boris Johnson, Donald Trump or Bolsonaro, or from the cold, institutional communication led by Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, the quiet, kind figures of Conte and Mattarella took us by hand and are, for some Italians, a small confort in a troubled period.
In conclusion, social glues are important during a crisis - they help people feeling part of a community, they give some hope. The philosopher Blaise Pascal in the XVII century described the phenomenon of the "divertissement", a distraction from everyday's problems produced by games, philosophical discussions, anything that helped men thinking about something different from their daily issues. In our case, humour became our divertissement. Each society will find one during this pandemic, for others might be something else. On a personal level, too, is important for us to find a divertissement and ties that will help us mantaining our relationships or passions. We are lucky that, today, thanks to the internet we are just a few clicks away from anyone and anything.
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| Mola mia Berghém |
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