COVID-19: Love in the Time of Corona (with apologies to Márquez)
As so many struggle under the many challenges of COVID-19, there will be life after this. And it might be a whole lot better than now.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera takes you on a twisted journey of love, loss and…love again, or as this opening of a synopsis of it succinctly summarises, it’s “…a celebration of life over death, love over despair, and health over sickness.”
Sound familiar?
I’m not trying to make light of the challenging times the world is lumbering through as it faces the all-enveloping pandemic of COVID-19. Every day yields another shock. No-one is untouched by it. Every human on this planet will have the course of their lives changed as a consequence. Even the super-rich, who may feel they are ‘immune’ to COVID-19, cushioned by their wealth and privilege, are not — point in case, Prince Charles, who, I might add, is actually a good fellow, but, well, he has it…
Right now, countries have either hit ground zero or are approaching it, with a range of outcomes and consequences but generally across the board involving massive health, social and economic disruption. All kinds of measures are being put in place to manage this, but the reality is, the entire globe is going through a massive shock, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the last World War and HOPEFULLY won’t see again for decades, if ever.
For all the pain and trouble COVID-19 has brought with it, it would be foolish to not also see it as a generational opportunity to intricately examine our lives, personal and professional, and to take stock of, well EVERYTHING, and move on from it with some gain from the pain.
…a celebration of life over death, love over despair, and health over sickness
Take work, for example. I’ve been a massive proponent of remote working and dispersed teams ever since I took my first remote working job a decade ago. I wrote a piece for Stay Unplugged a few weeks ago predicting COVID-19 might be the seismic shift that moves more companies that have been resistant to remote working or dispersed teams to consider it.
And think about our sense of and idea about community. Detractors have argued that digital comms and social media have dislocated the social contract. That as a society, we are slowly drifting apart and forgetting the innate tribalism inbuilt into our DNA, pushing us apart and losing a sense of care and connection with those around us and how this keeps society going.
While some might think that the social distancing we are being told we must do is going to make this worse, my experience over the past few days has been the opposite. Random people are smiling at me as we pass — at a safe distance, of course— in the street. Friends who I’ve become accustomed to only communicating with via socials or text are suddenly calling. I’m more patient with customer service staff I have to talk to, mostly through online chat or on the phone. I actually feel like I’m connecting more with people in a bit of a ‘we’re all in this together’ mentality.
So in the same vein of Love in the Time of Cholera being “…a celebration of life over death, love over despair, and health over sickness,” maybe the way we as people…as communities…as citizens…as nations take up the challenge of COVID-19 will mean ultimately we do see life triumph over death, love over despair (or fear, maybe is more apt) and what we want most of all, for health to triumph over sickness.
Maybe a brave new world awaits us if we are brave enough to learn some hard lessons and strong enough to get through the shake-up of our lives COVID-19 has brought.
Maybe, there are still bitter waters to get through, but they will eventually lead to the sweet.
