The Meaning of it all

There are videos circulating in WhatsApp and YouTube. Facebook too, maybe. Twitter? They have medium-long texts, nicely divided into frames, with calming pictures in the background and a soft male (or sweet female) voice that keeps the pace. As for the images, it's usually a mix of running children, blossoming flowers, two women of different ages on yoga mats on top of a hill at sunrise, people laughing heartedly, people crying, waves of the ocean, impossibly green forests, aerial views and views of the earth from space, extreme zoom-ins into the green left eye of a beautiful woman and extreme zoom-outs of planers, stars, and galaxies.

Apparently this virus came to teach us something. Or it came because we had lost our ways (who knew?), we were not kind to the planet nor to each other. And we are getting what we deserve. Or a mix of the two.

The virus came because it wants us to be more polite to each other. Spend less time on our phones. It really wants that we talk more to one another, listen to our children, to our partners, laugh more, be less selfish and do some yoga on top of a hill at sunrise. The virus wants us to start treating the planet better, stop polluting like there was no tomorrow, stop taking all those unnecessary flights (it has been somewhat successful in this, I have to admit), and maybe go back to a golden age that once was and is now lost. A golden age between the "before now" and the "even before that". We have to go back to when it was better: before we became so evil, so selfish, so cynical, so angry, so stupid.. We can go back to that. The virus is here to teach us a lesson.

I have to hold myself a lot because I usually like the people that send me these messages, but I wish it weren't so. When there is a religious flavor to the whole thing, I physically bite my tongue. Hard.

The virus is a bunch of genetic material that obeys the most fundamental law of evolution: it replicates and it evolves. It uses us to do so. The fucker. 

This is the only lesson the virus can teach, and "for us" it certainly did not come as a teacher, but as a plague.

If you are making such videos, or find them revealing, reassuring, mindful, or eye opening: please continue. By no means I want to force you to stop doing something you enjoy and may even do some good to your behavior towards the others. However I would just want to point out that it's not the virus. We didn't deserve to unwillingly kill our grandparents by simply coughing a bit, we didn't deserve to collapse our own fragile health system, we didn't deserve to put at risk those that need our protection, the immuno suppressed, the faint of heart, and the healthcare workers that are taking one "for the team". We didn't deserve to not know we would see our loved ones climb into an ambulance and not know that that would be the last time and that there would be no funeral, not even a sad goodbye. If you think we deserved this, we certainly don't deserve you.

Out of all this, I am convinced, we will learn something. But let's take, for once, the personal responsibility. No one is here to teach you how bad your behavior may be or have been, how you need to stop ignoring your kids, to start putting down your phone or caring for something besides yourself. No one is here to punish you for not caring for the planet, for killing the pandas or for raising the temperatures on Earth. The planet and the universe don't care about you. You will be long gone and life will go on, as it had gone on before - millions of years before anything that resembled a human being existed. If you think a virus can teach you about your flaws, it is only because you know what your flaws are. For once, take responsibility and learn something by yourself. Choose what your lesson is going to be. Don't hide in self-pity and stand up to the challenge.. you may be surprised, and find out that you are not alone.

Twitter: @piccini_davide