The playgrounds are once again raging, eating and drinking in the cafes and restaurants and sweating again in many fitness studios. It is slowly but surely returning, our normality that has been so painfully missed in recent weeks. Most people seem to be looking ahead, looking forward to the easing and wanting to forget Corona as quickly as possible. Somehow I want that too. But Corona has started something in me that latently worries me. Something that has nothing to do with contagion risks, a second wave, a new lockdown or a ban on contact – but with our normality, which has been so painfully missed in recent weeks …
Almost everyone was in favor of protecting people
I still remember very well the almost unrestricted approvalthat our government in March for the decision got to close everything except supermarkets, pharmacies and Co. for as long as necessary to protect human lives. Health comes first, it was said at that time from all directions and camps. Nobody wanted conditions like in Italy, where doctors simply had to let sick people die due to insufficient capacity. At the time, to be honest, I was positively impressed and a little surprised that people's lives seem to be put above consumption and money flow. But as positive as the decision impressed me, its consequences have shocked me to this day.
A good decision – with dramatic consequences
From restaurateurs to travel agents to parents: the various closings and the shutdown of economic processes have hit millions of people hard. Every time I pass my favorite restaurant, the owners of which have tried to survive these few weeks with takeaway and the distribution of regional products such as honey and jam, I ask myself:
- How can it be that people are in need of existence because they abide by the rules?
- How can it be that a good, in this case the only correct / human decision – which has also achieved the desired result in Germany! – has such bad effects?
- How can it be that massive problems arise if we all behave in solidarity for a very short time?
In my head and personal picture of an ideal world, none of this can be. There could and would. For example, the landlord of the owners of my favorite restaurant simply says to them: "Don't worry! It's an extraordinary situation, of course you don't have to pay rent." Parents could take care of their children in a very relaxed way because their employers fully backed them up. And in my imagination, something like government debt would not be a drama during a pandemic at all, because it is just a number that does not make anyone feel full or healthy. It is only my fault, but: How little my picture of an ideal world has to do with reality is now a little bit upsetting.
Where's the director please?
So far, I had always thought that we (people) largely shaped our world ourselves and that institutions and governments rule it in all our names. Compulsory education, full-time work weeks of 40 hours each, gyms, tourism, money – none of these are natural things, but human inventions. Due to the pandemic, we have run out of raw materials and areas have not been washed away by a tidal wave. Nothing was destroyed, but a lot is broken now and everyone is arguing. Just because we pressed pause in our own film.
But if we can't even do this with impunity in an emergency, we could take corrective action if we saw a need for optimization under normal circumstances? For example, how would we deal with it if – without a virus – more and more people in our society became depressed, burned out, suffered from stress symptoms or drifted apart in two classes? What would we do if it came out that our normality would fill up the oceans and make them uninhabitable? Because if a short break is such a stretch for all of us, I don't want to know what would be necessary for a sharp curve or change of direction …
The shock is deep, but not particularly tight
I wish I could say that the corona crisis had drawn my attention to how beautiful our "normal" world is, and at the very beginning I thought it would be exactly the same. But now, because of what we have experienced in this pandemic, our normalcy seems eerie and almost a little strange to me. However, I know myself well enough to know that it will be short-lived. In a few days to weeks, I won't be thinking about this anymore and will have digested my shock. I forget incredibly quickly. Soon I will go shopping and eat again as a matter of course and play in this film, of which I obviously have no idea who is directing and how it is going out – and I will not even care. Because at the latest when our normality, which has been so painfully missed in the past few weeks, is completely back, it will definitely help me with my forgetting.