After 365 days of fear, lockdown and loss of contact with our colleagues, our friends and our relatives, what are the lessons learned?

The first idea that comes to my mind is that time is flying; I realised that this started one year ago. It has been both a long moment of paralysis in which everything stopped and a moment of new experiences, new fears and anxiety, and plenty of positive emotions.
It may look paradoxical: we are talking about a global pandemic that killed so many people, that has paralysed the economy, that spread fear and awe everywhere, and that is still there one year later, and it had brought positive emotions?

The first months have been incredibly stressful for all of us: the situation was new, there was little information available, nobody was prepared, no masks and no tests, all shops closed and poorly operating online services.
Professionally, there was a strong perception that it could not get worse: we closed our premises, sent everybody back home without prior notice, had to stop ongoing contacts and activities, and our plans for 2020 looked suddenly obsolete and uncertain.
A bit everywhere in Europe, there were signals that drug treatment programmes and harm reduction services were closed and disrupted. The continuity of care was at stake, and our colleagues did not even have access to protective equipment.

Against all odds, we have been resilient, we have been creative, we have innovated pushed by the circumstances, by the scarcity of means and resources, and without any plans written in advance.
We have adapted ourselves to the new reality without knowing how long it would last. We have adapted our family life, home, work and learned plenty of things, from organising meetings and seminars on Zoom, WebEx or Teams all day long to starting online cuisine, yoga, gym or meditation lessons.

The journey allowed new encounters or re-encounters with ourselves, our family, our friends. Parents have never spent so much time with their children, taking care of their education while substituting their educators. Single persons experienced a new type of retreat, with nobody to talk to if not on WhatsApp or Zoom. We all missed the presence of our parents, brothers and sisters, and of our children. Distance has never been felt so long before. Suddenly we were missing our workplace and our colleagues, the informal contacts, the chat around the coffee machine, all the things we do every day in automatic pilot mode.
At the same time, we have rediscovered time, silence, reading, breathing. Life goes on: some of us lost a relative, others started a new relationship, babies are born or will do soon. There is life everywhere if we can see it and are ready to welcome whatever arises.

As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what is wrong.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

I don’t know when this all will finish or when the new « normal life » will emerge, but I know it is there. We cannot see it yet, but if we keep confident and patient and live our life here and now, it will be there one day. We will not understand really how it arrived, but there is already a « before » and an « after », and it will continue to do so. Tomorrow never ends to be tomorrow, and still, today always come.
Let us welcome those lessons right now; let us hold positive thoughts and positive emotions: it frequently happens that we are doing better than we believe. Let us focus on the good things that we have here and now. Let us increase our perception of what is good in us and around us.

Tomorrow will be what we allow it to be, so let us use any opportunity at every moment to make it better.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

C.P. Cavafy, « Ithaca »