13/03/20 – Saturday, 00:30 – Home
Some world left behind? This weekend may be the end of the modern era as we know it, or at least that’s what the media would have us believe, with comparisons to the blitz in terms of how life could be over the next few months.
Looking at the houses on my street through the front window, they and the world around them all look the same, but the worlds inside those houses are vastly different to how they were yesterday. There is a wide spectrum of responses that human beings can have to uncertainty – for some it presents as exhilarating, to others it is terrifying. But the uncertainty is there now, for everybody, and it will change us. The deadliness of the virus itself is not necessarily relevant here – it is the response, the hysteria, and how this will change the behaviours of everyone that will change everything. Borders in various countries have already closed, in Italy their whole country has shut down – no schools, restaurants, cafés, cinemas, bars, no sport. Most of the major sport leagues around the world have been postponed. The amount of profit lost for economies will already be monumental, and Western societies would never sacrifice such a thing lightly.
This is so far outside of our normal experience that no-one really knows how to react. I listened in on numerous conversations today of Mum’s joking about the bare shelves in the supermarket, of work colleagues chatting on the phone, playing down the situation. This tone will have no doubt changed by the time the nation sat down to watch the 6’o’clock news, which was willing the sombre state of affairs to be understood – emphasising that ‘our lives may never be the same again’. Still it’s hard to take this seriously, although by the spreading of such messages this may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A sleepless evening for many, pondering various questions and their own situation. My year (season) has been completely focused on helping the team to win the Olympics, but surely there won’t be an Olympics with such worldwide concern over the disease? Even in the best case, but very unlikely, scenario that covid-19 had disappeared as a threat by May, surely bringing the whole world together by July, and risking a potential reprisal, would be completely unsupported. What does this mean for the sports world, with nothing to play for? Will athletes even be able to train together? Maybe they’ll find meaning in mastery in its purest sense – not for acclaim, for glory, but pursued because it’s possible. But counter to that, how is mastery truly tested without competition…
An interesting time to be alive, I wouldn’t say I’m on the ‘exhilarated’ side of the spectrum, but certainly curious at this stage.
TF
Some Words Left Behind 