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.
