Jules Heartly | March 17^th, 2020  Day TWO of my day-to-day during Covid19-Mandated life changes.  

I woke up to a rainy morning with gray thoughts on my mind, and in the mind of my family -it seems- as even before our first coffee, we found ourselves discussing life after the coronavirus outbreak. Not just life in general, but life after #SocialDistancing had been ingrained in our brains for weeks.  

Life after a rush to #SocialDistancing forced us to put in practice a lot of things the world was not fully prepared for, like online classes for elementary school students (and all other levels too), online diagnosis for most patients, etc. and finding ourselves suddenly in a world with limited social interactions. The same ones we have been taught to be very important in our society. In fact, for the last few years they have been discussions about the impact of social media software on the one-on-one personal interactions and its consequences, and now…. this call to move 100% to it is interesting, to say the least.

 But the one that troubled me the most is the implicit thing about caring for others without supporting that feeling with an action!  In other words, if your neighbor needs help,  you could perhaps feel empathy, but you shouldn’t help.  How is that?   Individualism to the extreme?

During this Staycation, which actually may end up in a city lockdown, we are all forced to live with a new set of social manners.  No hugs, no handshakes, No kisses,  No physical expression of feelings (except via Emojis 😉 )  and it makes perfect sense since we are all together in this quest to stop the spreading of the  #CoronaVirus, but what would happen afterward? What social repercussions this may have?

Is this how we would live our lives after the Pandemic is over?

I find this troublesome, for me specifically and for many cultures raised with warm social manners, and educated to care for one another and help one another, in person, directly!  To show empathy and manifest it.

Any thoughts on this, anyone?

The rest of my day was between gray and green.  I went to Home Depot to buy the seeds and the soil to plant the tomatoes, I mentioned yesterday, I would do.  The road was semi-empty, and the cars moved slowly. It felt a bit like a funeral. The overcast sky made it even sadder.  Home Depot had no lines, which was good, but the store didn’t provide any hand sanitizer for anyone, so I poured a lot on my hands from the one I carried in my jacket, before getting back in my car.

The highlight of the day?

I went to my preferred liquor store in the neighborhood, and the owner offered me a free bottle of Italian red wine.  I made it home right on time to have a glass with all the Italians from Milan and around the country when they gathered at 6:00 P.M. to sing and dance from their balconies and of course through social media.  I joined them via Instagram and enjoyed this classic song: Volare : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqvHdZryKms

It made me believe that perhaps, after all, there is hope, and once the #covid19 pandemic is over, we may have a social life as good as it was before it or perhaps even better?  Well, dreaming is free.  So let me have this as my dream for tonight.

How did you cope today?

I would love to hear from you.

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