The World On The Edge. By Nasim Smadi

When we were children, our parents and teachers used to pull us by the ears. We would then realize that this pull was a gentle warning, compared to the slaps and beats. We would suffer for a few minutes only to remember the warning for a few days then return to committing the selfsame mistakes that brought about punishment.

While writing this article, I realized that the mask is still hanging onto my ear, though I have been alone at the office for more than four hours. In fact, the slight pain and pulling sensation behind my ear reminded me of the lessons we can learn from 2020, the ear-pulling year!

Upon hanging the mask on the head of the sandal wooden elephant crouching on my desk, my attention was attracted to the sound of girls playing on the roof of the building next to my office. I called the six-year old Mariam and warned her, together with her two sisters, from approaching the edge of the wall which was ten floors high. In fact, it was not except a few months ago that I left my old office on the fifth floor of the building which roof Mariam was playing on. Mariam’s father is the doorkeeper. As I was sitting in the shade, I observed the Mariam’s amazing creations which she devised to practice sports in like manner a CEO of a big organizations would do. I took my phone and photographed Mariam and her sister as they switched climbing the long wooden log, leaning at almost a 20 degrees angle. It is clear that the girls had designed a walking wooden device, though cheaper than any treadmill in the world. I smiled to myself and resumed working. But before starting to write, I opened the drawer and swallowed a Vitamin D tablet to boost my immunity and make up for my deprivation from the sun.

The mask, along with Mariam’s play with her sisters, made me recall my childhood memories and games which shaped my life. It is clear that Mariam is used to playing secretly in the sun, over my head when I was in that very same building. That is because adventures, risk-taking, implementing ideas, seizing the sun, experimenting, and creativity are still-in spite of Coronavirus-natural practices which reflect children’s concept of freedom. That is why I started considering the reasons which prevent us from climbing roofs and enjoying the sun which will make us dispense with Vitamin D tablets. Yet, leaving the quarantine reminds us of the masks which pull the ears of those who think themselves adults just because parents and master gurus have become weaklings.

Insofar as the economic and political impacts are concerned, regardless of the health and psychological ones, as well as the angle of ethical deviation, COVID-19 is considered one of the most important factors of change in human history. Everything in our lives has changed. Whoever does not heed what has been changed in their habits and actions have not recovered from the shock yet. Time flies, people die, and Coronavirus leaps from Huanan to Beijing, while we stand astonished, awaiting what will come.

We have recovered our resilience to be patient and some of our strengths and childhood legacies. We have forgotten fast food and quick fixes, and became sure that Starbucks coffee is not a natural human need, and that the buzzing of shaving machines at home is not any different from barber’s ones. Most of our branded clothes have been forgotten in our closets; indeed, closets have been forgotten too!

Because getting rid of the olden habits requires that they be replaced with new ones that fill our psychological drive, we opened our olden records. Fairouz’s sound has risen once again to fill our mornings. Unbeknownst to us, we recalled the desire to regain our freedom! We regained our personal interdependence and self-reliance which we have missed when we became bosses served by several assistants. Now, we face life, along with easy and hard situations alone. We drive and cook for ourselves. We forgot about flight schedules, airport calls, fastening our seatbelts before take-off and landing, names of hotels, and business meetings. We have recalled our dormed skills; we are rearranging our priorities, memorizing information and free-to-call numbers to ask about curfew times, buying winged masks and boxes of Strepsils with each box of Vitamin D or Panadol.

I am now surrounded with not less than three thousand books some of which were authored by minds which preached, and passed away. Others were written by minds which are still thinking, philosophizing, suggesting solutions of which the least succeed and most fail. Until a few months ago, I used to fight boredom with reading, and re-arranging my books, and classifying the similar ones beside one another. But books have become similar in form and content. Even more, their covers would look like away from the sunlight. All these books did not warn us. Nor did they reflect the truth about ourselves. In fact, Yuval Harari’s absolute stupidity has been exposed when he claimed in his Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow that man is God: for COVID-19 has come to teach him that he failed even to reach humanity!

Indeed, throughout our lives, we have been in need of masks that pull our ears that we might listen to minds and hearts. Now, we can listen to the voices of Mariam and her sisters on the roof as they laugh and slide on the wooden log which leans with a 20 Degrees angle, toward the sun and toward life!

Nasim Smadi

Editor - www.BestBookBriefings.com

Founder of www.edara.com