Who We Will Be After COVID-19?

Science fiction and our imagination have been hand in hand since our childhood. And always in a sense of technological progress: the first space satellites, long-distance communications, intelligent clocks and autonomous cars were shown to the world through the big screen before they were a fact.

We always wished these movie things would come into our everyday lives. We knew it would be possible and... voilà!

However, we have always refused to accept that humanity could be in check for what happened in any American catastrophe. Of all the proposals, surely, that of a nuclear war had always been the favorite candidate to reduce our known world to ashes.

The Future Is Here!

But you see, it is a pandemic, a lethal virus that decimates us and keeps us confined “sine die”. The world has stopped and walls have been put up to the giant of globalization... Who would have thought? The future is already here.

And with the future, a collective transformation of which, perhaps, we are not yet aware, is being forged. A social change in which the small details, worldly life, creativity, culture and solidarity will be the pillars of it.

Small details that today lead us to miss the most everyday things that we barely valued, such as, for example, those streets in which we walked from time to time, always with our heads set on the personal, family or work problems that we might have, or even attached to our mobile phones.

Always oblivious to the shapes of the tiles that we stepped on, to the past history of the place where we were, to the facades of each building, to the existing shops, those that now remain closed.

We walked away from the sounds, the smells and the people. Today, for sure, we wonder what will be of our streets, who will be occupying them or if they will be the same as we remember them when we see them again.

Will they remember us? And, above all, we wonder how long it will last? Until when?

What is certain is that we will once again value as a society the essence of the things that surround us: every sound, every step, every ray of sunshine; every breath of wind.

Perhaps, after another upsurge of overexposure in the nets to show our return to normality, we will dispense with them and thus end up with vices that are currently acquired and dedicate ourselves to living off the small, great things that life brings us, those that confinement makes us feel again, like missing family and friends, missing hugs, those that today have been snatched from our fellow men, from our families.

And, especially, those in the health sector, who are exposed to the virus in the front line, and who, even under the same roof, keep their distance from their loved ones for fear of contagion. Fortunately, they will soon revert with the necessary force to last a lifetime.

We will fall in love again!

We will fall in love again, as is already happening, from balcony to balcony, where glances cross and intertwine between desires and feelings. What began as a simple gesture is now implying the opening of windows and balconies, the loss of the absurd shame acquired after becoming virtual beings and that led us to have no idea who lived in front of us and next to our jaws.

We are again neighbors, acquaintances of the neighborhood and the community. And those will be the first hugs, when we go down to our portals in unison and, already on the mainland, we are founded with people who until a few days ago were real strangers. That will be the basis of the future.

We'll be less technological and more humane. We could be the ones who regenerate and consume what really matters. Like that culture that we feel every day is more productive on a social level, that which emanates from the voices of those who sing on balconies, write books or create to entertain us in the worst moments.

#NormalcyModoOn

And so, in solidarity, we will continue to offer to do the shopping for people that time and circumstances have impeded; we will keep our ears open, in case some woman today confined with her beast needs us to break down the barred door of her cell; we will go out to manifest ourselves in our next #NormalcyModoOn, to shout against the negligence, not only moral, but also social, that some companies carry out these days, for example, forcing their employees to take a very unidyllic vacation; we will resurface excited and grateful, but above all, vindictive, so that public health is strengthened with heroes and heroines like the ones we put so much value on these days.

So that neither the lack of resources, nor of staff who save lives, will result in the implementation of a mathematical account that will determine who deserves to live or not.

We will go out, in short, to celebrate the days not lived. No, they are not the ones that have already passed, but those that are still to be lived. We will go out with more desire not to lose an instant of this mysterious gift that we call life.

#IStayHome. Life is waiting for us too.