Day 1 at home: what I'm worried about
In August we cautiously returned to the editorial office. Even though it was only two days a week, we were out of it for a while. Now I dive through my mandatory ten-day quarantine (because my holiday destination turned orange) straight into the home working mode via Mark's press conference.
Quarantine is not fun in itself, because after four days at home you even miss the trip to the drugstore for a new deodorant. I also find it really hard to set myself up at the kitchen table, because it's nice to be able to complain to a physical person that the container of coffee pods is once again full. But that's actually the least of my worries. So why? I feel so much division around me due to the corona crisis.
It creates tension in families, it rubs between friends, and it doesn't sit well with me. So many heads, so many opinions, as the saying goes, but sometimes those heads and opinions just can't seem to find each other anymore due to this crisis. I try not to let it happen to myself, but it happens to me too. I don't understand the friends who hug other friends while the numbers are rising. Some colleagues don't understand me when I decide to board the plane, armed with a face mask and disinfectant for a vacation. I hold my heart for family members who seem to go from test to test because they have to stand in front of the class. In my app, I receive lengthy explanations from doctors who speak out against the measures, and I send back a narrative from a virologist who thinks differently. And in the meantime, I feel more and more misunderstanding.
Where you could once give each other space in different thinking, cuddle a discussion well afterwards, or kiss away a disagreement, that seems no longer possible. Talitha Muusse articulated exactly what I was thinking on Monday at De Vooravond. She expressed concern about how we will socially emerge from this corona crisis, that we have so much distrust towards each other. How it divides families and friends. One is for the government, the other against. “Let's believe in each other's ability to do this together,” she concluded her concerns. I couldn't have put it better myself.
Day 1 at home: let's not lose sight of each other literally but especially figuratively.
