RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) Imagine the vision of a medieval ancient mariner, sailing west from Europe, unsure what lay ahead, lands unknown or even possibly an end to the world where the ship might fall off as over a waterfall.
The beautifully illustrated early maps displayed imaginative sea monsters rising from the waves and undefined land masses sometimes carrying the legend, ‘Hic Sunt Dracones’ – here are dragons – a stern warning of what might be waiting in the unknown. It must have taken a special kind of courage to contemplate such a scary future while dreaming of the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
That’s pretty much how I feel today.
The only thing I know is what I don’t know. What will life be like at the other end of our difficult voyage for which we have all been ill prepared? Will there be dracones lying in wait to apocalyptically determine our future when this pandemic is just a bad memory? Or just possibly, despite its major disruptions to life as we have known it, will there be a new light at the end of the tunnel, illuminating a spiritually richer existence than we have known, bringing into focus things that perhaps we should have seen before, making us, if you will, better people?
One thing is certain. Life will not simply be the same as it was before the pandemic forced us out of our well-worn paths and habits. The sense of community and warmth of the familiar abraço may be gone forever, replaced almost certainly by a less instinctive and more distanced greeting. The whole concept of ‘going to work’ and its shared camaraderie will never be the same when ‘work’ increasingly happens away from a central hub, often without leaving home; those gossipy exchanges around the water cooler or coffee machine are just happy memories.
As we have now experienced, human relations, when forced through the filter of a virtual tube, are very different than when they are experienced live face to live face.
Whether we noticed or not, things had already been changing before Covid-19 shined a spotlight on the many worrying aspects of our modern existence. The pandemic has forced us to take a long hard look at our society, our lives and values, and assess whether they may need some positive adjustment.
This gringo and his Brazilian wife were fortunate enough to have been on a short holiday in the Mata Atlântica in Bahia when the raging pandemic caused flights back to São Paulo to be indefinitely cancelled. Having planned to be away for just over a week and with our things in a single suitcase, we were lucky to be able to borrow the house of an absent friend and settled down for what has become six months of increasingly glorious isolation.
Without restaurants, Uber, cinemas, even those rich personal contacts with family and friends – without in fact ever leaving this nature-rich area where helping a slightly injured sloth back into the safety of her tree became an important, day-defining and satisfying event – material things which seemed so important before, just don’t anymore. Surprisingly, the clothes from that suitcase have proven more than we needed. So much for fashionistas!
It’s very soothing that the incredibly rich nature that surrounds us appears impervious to the crazy goings-on in the world. To the endlessly noisy rooster crowing, every morning is a revelation, bringing a wonderful soft light, highlighting the beads of moisture on giant palm leaves, silhouetting the massive century-old jackfruit trees and signaling another day full of promise.
Fortunate as we are in this natural paradise to have electronic access through the internet to what’s going on in the world, as time passes, its breathless noise diminishes to meaninglessness.
When the pandemic put a brake on normal activities, each of us was required to adapt. Instead of being crushed by events, many local people and refugees from the virus-infected metropolises have allowed their entrepreneurial spirits to flourish and have created services and businesses they had never dreamed of before. At first it was driven by economic necessity. Then, as the new reality became more familiar, people began to embrace it with a growing sense of pleasure and purpose.
“I’ll never again work for anyone I don’t like and respect” said a local lady who before the pandemic labored unhappily in various offices, “just to make money.” Out of work, she has morphed into a ‘public concierge’. Now she feels she is performing a needed service, fulfilled through saving neighbors the potential risk of infection, taking orders on her cell phone and properly masked, going to purchase what has been ordered and delivering the order to the customer’s front gate. The local fishermen who used to wait for customers now send details of last night’s catch to customers’ cell phones, happily offering personal delivery as if there had never been another way.
Apps like ‘WhatsApp’ are used by the local resident community of 800 or so to communicate, and ZOOM provides the infrastructure for many, like my wife, who started giving daily classes to help more than 50 dance teachers from all over the country improve their teaching skills and make good use of the enforced lock-downs.
We have experienced that rarest of things, too often absent from our pre-pandemic lives: the time to reflect on, and weigh, the essential value of many things we previously just took for granted. We have discovered the magic of how much we can do without.
There may be dragons waiting in the unknown post-pandemic future. More likely, recalling the ancient mariners, if we have the courage to shed historic prejudices and beliefs long enough to see beyond them, the new reality may definitely be worth the hardships of the voyage.