To “The Man in the Arena” Fighting Coronavirus, I Say Thank You

To all the doctors,

who work day and night to save lives in increasingly difficult conditions.

To all who spend days and weeks without being able to see their own families; who trade their homesickness for the safety of their families; who strive to reduce the suffering of others and ignore their own suffering.

To all who have to make terrible choices, who have to have to choose between the ones they will try to save and those who will have to die first.

Thank you all.

To all the nurses,

technicians, and health professionals who accumulate the work and tiredness of taking care of patients every day with the effort of trying to keep everything safe and clean, in so very difficult circumstances.

Thank you all.

To all the parents

who suffer because they know their children are fighting the disease without being able to see them; to all children who suffer from their parents’ absence for the same reason; to all grandparents who are away from their grandchildren; to all kids who don’t understand why they can’t hug a crying friend.

To all of them, my solidarity.

To all the policemen,

firefighters, military, and all that work in organizations who day and night help to provide assistance or maintain safety and hygiene rules to reduce transmission.

Thank you all.

To all the politicians,

leaders, and all those whose decisions affect others; to all who have to make plans without having all the necessary information and knowledge: to all who try to find the best actions when the numbers of the infected and sick threaten to exceed all the existing or possible response capacity.

Thank you all.

To all the scientists,

researchers, and technicians who every day try to develop vaccines or medicines, to all those who seek to find ways to cure or lessen the effects of the disease.

Thank you all.

To all who fight

without strength, to all who try and make errors, to all who seek and cannot find, to all who do not give up.

Thank you all.

You are all “The Man in the Arena”

I think of all these heroes when I read these words from Theodore Roosevelt in the speech “Citizenship in a Republic” (that is known as “The Man in the Arena”):

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the hurt of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. “

To all I mentioned and to the many others who fight this hard battle every day, I am grateful.

Difficult times are also times when the human being will show everything he is capable of doing. Everything he can do and sacrifice to help others, to try to save lives or minimize the suffering of losing the ones they love more.

These are times of horror but also times of greatness, times when the human heart shows its best.

Thank you all.

You are all heroes.

You are our true heroes.