This plague is bigger than us. More powerful than any other flesh and blood enemy we've ever imagined or seen on film. Every now and then the terrifying idea that this time, perhaps, we will lose the war breaks through to our hearts. The whole world. Like when the "Spanish flu". We immediately discard the idea, because it is not possible. We are in the 21st century! We are advanced, computerized beings, endowed with infinite weapons and means of destruction, protected by antibiotics, immunized. However, this plague tells us that the rules of the game are different, so different that, in fact, there are no rules. We have fear, every hour, the sick and the dead all over the world. And the enemy shows no signs of weariness in his work of harvesting and using our bodies to multiply.
Other articles by the author
In memory of Amos Oz
Equality is not a "reward"
I want a home to live in peace
This faceless, violent and devastating plague seems to threaten to absorb our entire being, suddenly so fragile and powerless. And even the countless things that have been said in the past few months have failed to make it a little more understandable and predictable.
“A plague is not tailored to man; that is why we tell ourselves that it is nothing more than a nightmare, a bad dream that will pass ”, wrote Albert Camus in his novel La plague. “But it doesn't always happen, and from bad dreams to bad dreams, it is men who die ... They believed that everything was still possible for them; which assumed that plagues were impossible ... How could they think of something like the plague, which suppresses the future? ”.
We already know that there is a certain percentage of the population that will be infected with the virus. A certain percentage will die. In the United States there is talk of a million deaths. Death has become very tangible. Those who can suppress. But those with a very active imagination - like me, for example, so read this with a dose of skepticism - are hypotheses that multiply as fast as the infection rate. Every time I meet people, I consider their possibilities in the roulette of the epidemic. And my life without that person. And his life without me. Any conversation could be the last.
When we look at our loved ones, we feel that their disappearance would eliminate someone irreplaceable from the world
The circle closes more and more. At first we were told that they "closed the heavens" (what an expression). Then the beloved cafes, theaters, sports fields, museums closed. Kindergartens, schools, universities. One after another, humanity turns off its flashlights.
Suddenly, a catastrophe of biblical dimensions has burst into our lives. Everyone participates in this drama. No one is left out. No one has a minor role. In such a massive massacre, the dead are only numbers, anonymous and faceless. But, when we look at our loved ones, we feel that each person is a whole, infinite culture, whose disappearance would eliminate someone irreplaceable from the world. The uniqueness of each one screams from within and, just as love makes us distinguish one person from all others, now it is the consciousness of death that does it.
And blessed be humor, the best way to bear all this. When we can laugh at the coronavirus, we are actually saying that we are not yet completely paralyzed. That we can still move and face it. That we continue fighting it and that we are not just helpless victims (we are helpless victims, but we have invented a way to avoid the horror of knowing it and even have fun with it).
And blessed is the humor. When we can laugh at the coronavirus, we are saying that we are not paralyzed
For many, the plague may end up being the most momentous event of their lives. When everything happens and people leave their homes after the long confinement, perhaps new and surprising possibilities will be articulated. Maybe the tangibility of death and the miracle of having escaped it will be a shock. Many will lose loved ones. Many will be left without work, without income, without dignity. But some may also not want to return to their previous lives. Some - those who can, of course - leave the job that suffocated them for years. Some will decide to leave their family. Separate from your partners. Bring a child to the world or just the opposite. Others will come out of the closet (of any type of closet). Some will begin to believe in God. Others, believers, will apostatize. Perhaps an awareness of the brevity and fragility of life will prompt people to set other priorities. To further separate the wheat from the chaff. To understand that time, and not money, is the most precious resource.
There will be those who for the first time doubt about decisions made, options ignored and concessions made. About the loves they did not dare to feel. About the lives they did not dare to live. Men and women will wonder why they ruined their lives with relationships that filled them with misery. Others may suddenly find their political views wrong, based solely on fears or values that have disintegrated during the epidemic. Perhaps some will distrust why their nation has fought for generations and believed that war is a divine mandate. Perhaps this very difficult experience will make people hate nationalisms, for example, and everything that underlines the separation, the foreigner, the hatred and the trench. Some may wonder, for the first time, why Israelis and Palestinians continue to battle each other, ruining their lives for more than a thousand years in a war that could have been resolved long ago.
The very fact of exercising the imagination from the depths of despair and fear has its own strength. Imagination not only sees fatalities, it also makes our mind free. In times of paralysis, the imagination is like an anchor that we throw into the future, to pull us towards it. The ability to conceive of a better situation means that we have not yet allowed the plague and desolation to take over our entire being. So we can hope that perhaps, when the epidemic ends and healing comes, humanity will be flooded with a different spirit, calm and freshness. Perhaps we will see in people, for example, signs of innocence without a hint of cynicism. Perhaps the sweetness will become common currency. Perhaps we will understand that the murderous pandemic has given us the opportunity to free ourselves from layers of fat and dirty greed. Thick ideas and without judgment. Of an abundance that has become excess and has already begun to drown us.
Imagination not only sees fatalities, but also makes our mind free
People may look at the evil results of the abundance and excess society and feel nauseous. Perhaps you naively realize that it is terrible that there are people so rich and people so poor, that such a rich and overflowing world does not offer equal opportunities to all who are born. We are discovering that we all form the same infectious human tissue. What is good for everyone is good for everyone. What is good for the planet is good for us, our well-being, our clean air and the future of our children.
And perhaps the media, which help so much to write the story of our life and our times, also ask themselves sincerely how much they have contributed to the feeling of general nausea in which we were plunged before the plague. Why we had the feeling that some people manipulated us while those media told us our tragic and complicated story in a rude and cynical way. I am not talking about the serious press, but about the "mass media", which long ago went from being a media for the masses to being a media that turns people into a mass.
Is any of this true? Who knows? And even if it's true, I'm afraid it will soon fade away and everything will go back to the way it was before the epidemic, before the flood. It is difficult to know what we are going to live until then. But we will do well to keep asking questions, as a medicine, until a vaccine is found.
David Grossman is a writer.
Translation by María Luisa Rodríguez Tapia.
You can follow EL PAÍS Opinion on Facebook, Twitter or subscribe here to the Newsletter.