Tales from Crete | 76

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping and the temperature is gradually creeping up to something that little by little starts to remind you that spring is on its way. The many harbingers of spring have already bloomed in the garden for so long that I myself have been worried about whether there would be a night frost and take the life of the young spring flowers.

My concern in this regard is probably completely unjustified now (at least I think so), but on the other hand it has been replaced by a completely different and much greater form of insecurity about the corona virus which has suddenly brought large parts of the world to a standstill . It is not the case that just individual parts of our normal everyday life have been put out of business, but basically the whole of society. Companies that we otherwise thought were very stable and financially strong have to send their employees home in droves. Some receive a salary while they are sent home, others have to cover some of the expenses themselves. The health care system struggles every day, even every hour, to keep up with the increasing number of infected people, knowing that it will probably only get worse and worse in the future. With the uncertainty comes an uncertainty that we are not at all used to. On the other hand, we are used to being able to get up every morning to a well-functioning society where we don't have to have major worries, a bus or a train that runs on time, and we can get back and forth to our workplace unhindered, go on visits and meet up with family and friends in a friendly atmosphere, and we are not in any way afraid to stand a little close together on the bus or train, but easily come to complain that there are not enough seats. We are used to being able to go out to a restaurant and have a good dinner if we want, we are used to being able to book a plane ticket and travel wherever we want, if we otherwise have the money for it, and we are used to taking all the welfare we have built up as a matter of course. We are also used to having a hospital system that functions without major challenges and we in the hospital sector can repair almost anything. We can genetically engineer and clone so that we make ourselves masters of life and can artificially extend it. We can send people into space to other planets and bring them back home safely….there are no limits to what we can do.  We get smarter and smarter, can do more and more and that is perhaps the most frightening thing. It easily becomes a sleeping pillow that makes us believe that we as humans can do everything, when in essence we can do nothing.

If we could do everything, we would also be able to overcome death. Yes - fortunately, we can in some cases revive people who go into cardiac arrest if we act quickly enough, just as we can successfully "revive" the small olive tree if it only has a single small green branch left, by giving it something as basic as water. But once it is completely dried out, we can do anything without anything helping, because then the tree is dead and cannot be saved.

I may be a little atypical, but like the vast majority of Greeks, I also have the attitude that even if you feel you have big worries in your everyday life, the vast majority of worries are related to the values ​​and expectations we build up ourselves. There is only reason to really worry on the day the sun no longer rises, the birds no longer chirp, the spring flowers stay in the ground and no longer announce that spring and summer are on their way. That day there really is reason to worry, but by then it's probably too late anyway.

The essence of this is that if instead of worrying so much about what we can't do anything about anyway, and instead use our energy to maneuver as safely as we can now, through what we call life, then we can we use our worry gene to worry about each other.

And the message of this little Friday story (which I actually also got inspiration for in Crete) is that if we all do as good for each other as we can, there aren't any left to do bad things.

So in these corona times let's do as good for each other as we can, show the consideration we should, help each other to the best of our ability and instead of asking what you can do for me, ask what I can do for you . Then I think we will get through the crisis and once again we can worry about whether the young spring flowers can now cope with one more night frost, or whatever it might be.

Stay together by keeping your distance - then there will probably be time for a hug again.