Take time to think

Here we are, all isolated, living through the lockdown. .. but not alone: thanks to the the internet.

Here I am, with my husband, in a small corner of southeast asia. We could never have imagined what would happen when we decided to settle here.

The first two months, living "out of a suitcase", looking for a house, paperwork, documents, etc. All went to plan. After that, and probably harder on me, the cultural adaptation. When I left Argentina I also left my comfort zone: family, friends, colleagues, job and activities, everything I had built and loved. I came to a country where you can′t walk to the supermarket or a kiosk, I had to learn new rules for driving, dressing, and even greeting. Recently married, zero aptitude for domestic tasks, and on top of everything, now I can′t fly back, or go anywhere beyond the supermarket.

I suffer the isolation just like any other human being, the only difference is that I got used to it before the pandemic ensued. It also gave me some free time, which I haven′t experienced in the last 10 years (maybe more). Time to learn how to cook, think and feel, and build something new for myself.

Time is a gift. We are given it when we are born. Unfortunately, the way the world functions today turns it into a luxury as we grow up. We become zombies, we stop thinking and feeling.

Today however we have been forced into a breaking point. Panicking is useless, individual action totally ineffective and even life threatening. For the first time in human history we see in real time how a small selfish act can create a tsunami of effects. For the first time humanity can clearly see the dimension of a world problem and how we are interconnected.

This crisis will have many effects: a peak in pregnancies and divorces, probably a lot of people will present psychiatric problems after isolation. But as humanity, we can only enter one of two paths: become aware, conscious of being part of a whole, no matter how many artificial borders we may have created. Or continue the path of selfishness, primitive, individualistic, parasitic.

Why not take the chance to reconnect with ourselves? work on our emotional intelligence. Understand fear as an alert mechanism, a primary instinct, instead of rushing to emptying supermarkets. The need of control is fighting the absolute absurdity of the idea of control itself.

Become aware and conscious implies more than an effort to avoid panicking. We need to prepare for the post pandemic. The cooperative world will have to reconsider remote working as the rule rather than the opposite, saving precious time, reducing commuting and the use of petrol, even reducing waste, improving the life-quality of employees. We talk about leadership all the time, yet we needed a pandemic to understand the new time and space possibilities.

In other levels, decisions will imply bigger stakes. Sustainable fuels, investment in real universal health care, revise the logic of paying fortunes for a sports industry instead of thinking about the environment, directing investment to the real priorities of the world, improve salaries of community service agents, change the food industry....there are so many things we need to do.

So many leaders are still thinking about money only, disregarding sustainability and risk.

We also discuss innovation all the time. What we need is not a recipe, we've heard enough success cases. I feel the real need is to accelerate the spiritual change, so we are able to make ethical decisions. So much money goes into war weaponry research, but so little into solving poverty.

It is a good moment to wish for a better world. This should be the breeding ground for creativity that will lead us to change everything. Maybe even stop thinking in terms of friends or enemies, but try to understand and help the others. There are so many ethical decisions, all of them are hard.

But these decisions will lead us to either a post apocalyptic world such as the movies, devastated and horrible, or to a better world, a new view of what it means to be human, a renewed nature.