Resilience Is What We Need in The Next Year. Again.

How adapting to the new rules will save our peace of mind, and even our own life.

Even if I were arriving from Mars, I think I would know what our lovely planet has gone through in the past two years. My Country has been particularly hard hitten by the pandemic, and we paid a painful tribute in lives to Covid.

Besides the number of casualties, what I found unexpectedly shocking has been the speed at which people divided into opposed parties. In the beginning, there were a vast majority of people who were simply afraid, and a little minority of negationists. Both parties felt they were resilient. Both parties felt they were able to adapt to the situation, with the proper change of habits.

While months passed and the situation was more and more dramatic, the parties multiplied. At present, we count a minority of negationists, no-wax, no-mask… and a majority of pro-vaccine, or at least advice-compliant. But the only group that includes everyone is that of angry people. Anger is shared by almost everyone, in its full shades: from the slight annoyance to the pure wrath.

I know that the minority is much more interesting, but I would like to share the feelings of a medium rule-compliant, as I think that the many facets of our feelings haven’t been clearly focused.

We have to admit that we are angry. Anger might be a positive feeling if we use it against our enemy, and at the moment our only enemy is the pandemic. On the contrary, sometimes we have been angry against anyone who was slowing the exit… or at least, anyone we felt as someone who was intentionally slowing the end. Despite it is not that honorable, we have to admit that we have been looking for a culprit. In the beginning, we looked at people who were reluctant to rules as plague spreaders who were guilty of keeping the pandemic alive. I know many people who simply cut ties with old friends who were not on the same wavelength about vaccines and rules.

Some friends of mine are even afraid to share some absolutely logical doubts about treatments. Besides, in these months many debates about freedom, personal choice, and the ethic of the emergency have been thriving. But, far from finding a common field of dialogue, even the debates about all these democratic topics have been fuelling anger and divisions

The matter is that we all want compensation.

That’s so simple: we all feel like kids who want a prize for their good behavior. We have been patient, we have followed the rules, we have been compliant… now we want the emergency to end, and get back to a life of work, travels, gatherings, and amusement. We all wish that, sooner or later, we will get some sort of reimbursement, as if life was in debt with us. We feel we got a credit, in terms of discipline, that we can claim.

Our peace of mind would get stronger if we could simply accept that we are tired and angry. We all have developed a strong resilience in the past months. We have been able to adapt to the emergency with a change in our habits, either accepting new rules and treatments or trying to find a way to avoid them. In any case, no one had an easy life, and everybody has faced fear and uncertainty. Everyone had to take important and uncomfortable decisions about our own health and our beloveds’.

As the new year approaches, I feel grateful for the ability we all developed as resilient people. I am afraid that our resilience will be challenged again in the new year, but hopefully, we have learned how to react and stay sound. Safe and sound.