A month ago I would have never imagined the surreal situation the whole world is in right now. Echoes from the far East, but nothing more. “It is just the flu, isn’t it?” we were thinking, and if you were not listening to any news, that was even more of a distant faded echo.

We had the first sick people but they were contained in one of the best hospitals in Rome, “just” an old Chinese couple. Still, our lives were going on normally, in our routine, with our day to day life problems.

By the end of February, something happened in Bergamo, a small city in the most industrial and commercial area of North Italy. Suddenly the community in the area started to fall sick, spreading around like nothing before. Still “it is just the flu, sick and old people are getting it”, “common flu kills thousands every year, this is not much different,” we were telling each other, weren’t we? 

On Saturday the 7th of March, I was sitting at my mum’s dinner table with my boyfriend. We just had dinner and we were chit-chatting. A text message arrived at my mum’s phone from a friend living in Milano. It was a news leak: the Italian Government was just about to close Northern Italy, the “Red Zone”, to prevent the spread of the virus in all over the Country. That was it. Many, especially young people living, working and studying in the North just flooded back to the South. That wasn’t a smart move in preventing the spreading of the virus which moves quickly from organism to organism just with a touch, a sneeze or a cough.

Since March 9th we are officially and practically in quarantine, not going out of our homes if not strictly necessary, to work or to purchase food items. Overnight our lives have changed completely, our habits our ways of perceiving the world and others had to reshape into something new, into something unknown. Of course, people are different in their ways to approach difficult situations, feelings go from fear to hope. 

I might have seen and read too many dystopian films and novels, and this is something that goes so close to those visions, but my heart has always been secretly optimistic. I see people from their balcony, their gardens and windows singing and playing music, trying to keep each other company, being conscious of a dramatic situation in which we are forced to be in solitude, but not giving up to it. In all this suffering I’m seeing the strength of overcoming hard times with a smile.

I’m conscious that not every person is responding in the same way, fear is a side symptom of this virus, and locking down a whole country will contribute to exposing its weakness. Hearing the news from all over the world now, makes me believe that we really and truly are a global community and society facing up the same difficulties.

My hope as a human being is that we will all be able to use these times as an opportunity to reconsider and revalue things we lost track of, both as individuals and as a society. It is the chance to see ourselves as part of an environment that has to be protected and preserved. It is the chance to reshape economic dynamics, not only locally but to reconsider them globally. It is a chance to grow as human beings. It’s the chance to give up speed, production, and consumption and rediscover the value of time, creativity and relationships.