Our House — Revisited
With the new school year approaching, the second lockdown being locally imposed on several cities in the UK and the talk of the second wave, I decided to feel the difference and re-read “Our House”, which I wrote at the end of the first wave. Although somewhat naive in the aftermath, the urgency of the solution it offers resonates with me even more today, 4 months later! Just had to revise the number of months I’ve been working from home from two to six— the rest follows below, untouched.
“Have you seen our house?” A young man in a tweed hat is walking down a busy London street, popping this seemingly simple question to the random passers-by: “Have you seen our house?”. Puzzled by the absurdity of such a question being asked by an utter stranger, the passers-by pause for a moment, then shrug and hurry away, most probably thinking “what a nutter!”. This was the opening scene in a music video made almost 40 years ago and, sure enough, I used to love it as a kid. The band was called “Madness” and these were the times when everyone around me was very busy “minding their own business”, working hard at organizing their lives “better than others”, getting their well-deserved “place under the sun” and, once “under the sun”, hiding under the parasol of the seemingly safe paradigm “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours”.
To be perfectly honest, having joined the rat race, many ended up by succeeding in reaching their goals, myself included! Or so we thought, because after a short-lived bliss of buying a new toy — be it a phone, a car or a short break in a beautiful “far-far-away” — we would always return to the same rat race. Produce, consume, and throw away as much as possible, as quickly as possible — just to keep the economy’s wheels turning round and round, while suffering from a looming ecological disaster and an ever-growing separation between all: family members, colleagues at work, countries. Omnipresent depression, drug-dependency, loneliness, poverty, mental problems, in adults and children alike, extinction of animals, deforestation, piles of garbage on land, piles of plastic in the ocean, nuclear waste, broken relationships, Brexit, broken economies and markets, trade wars, sanctions, terrorism, military conflicts. Until, as much as I was picking my brain, there was no place “to hide from it all” — and, believe me, I was trying hard, having lived and worked on all five continents through my very busy life. That’s the madness I used to call “normality” just a few months ago.
Then, Nature released the Coronavirus into our streets and into our minds, and it all paused.
Paused in utter bewilderment, because besides causing illness and death, this new virus started running down the streets of London and all the other streets of the world, asking the most uncomfortable and puzzling questions, much like the man in a tweed hat in that music video from the 80s. “Have you seen our house?” Yes, I realize that it is down to my choice of music as a kid, and that to you its question might have sounded different — but the fact remains that the virus quickly emptied our streets and locked us all up, until the dust settled and we finally were able to fix our gaze at “our house”! Yes, we have seen it now — the house that all humanity shares as one big family — our integral and interconnected world!
The virus helped us see that we all depend on each other in a very clear way, because the social distancing and other measures will not stop the pandemic if implemented only by a few families, in a few cities or by a few countries — it needs to be a common action by the whole world. Moreover, it helped us clearly see that, in this big house of ours, one person acting irresponsibly towards others will trigger a chain reaction that will eventually ruin everyone. It announced a new “normal”, where greater “mutual responsibility” is asked from everyone by Nature itself — and, in a very drastic, forceful way! Am I ready for it? Certainly, not! To me it rather seems that humanity, me included, has reached the peak of “mutual irresponsibility” — as much as we are all connected via smartphones and computers, alas! on a deeper level we feel more disconnected from each other than ever before.
Whether we are ready or not, Nature does not seem to be inclined to give us more time– it made us all “grounded”, as if humanity was some badly-behaved school kid — “you are not allowed to see the world through your favourite glasses of self-interest anymore, it’s time to grow up”, no choice but to start learning to see the world through the new glasses, the single pair I share with the rest of the world. It is a harsh reality, not just because of the Coronavirus itself, the world has seen pandemics before (think the Spanish Flu of 1918), but because of what it has revealed — a disconnected humanity on the brink of collapse and in urgent need for a change of the paradigm it lives by in an otherwise integral, interconnected world — and such a change cannot be easy or quick, it requires education! So here we are, back in school, locked down together with our families, kids and parents alike, practicing how to build more caring, supportive and mutually responsible relationships with each other.
With my company’s offices closed and working remotely from home for the last two months (6 months at the time of writing “revisited”), I have certainly had a lot to learn! Funnily enough, my family situation is also very reminiscent of the “Madness” song: balancing work and helping my wife to look after our six children 24/7, having to provide home-schooling to the four of them — it has been a steep learning curve! But I am trying to be a grateful student, I feel that I will need these skills in the world after the pandemic — and what a different world it will be, if I am not even sure if this time tomorrow I still have my job of 25 years. Small steps at a time, I will need to learn to relate to all humanity as to my extended family, in a new reality where we all live in “our house”.
Luckily, Nature is a good teacher and it gives us many beautiful examples of interconnected systems working in mutual responsibility and absolute cooperation — for instance, that of the cells of a healthy human body, all cells of which happen to work only for the benefit of the whole system (with the exception of the cancerous cells). The Coronavirus pandemic might not be the last tough exam for the humanity, and Nature might still want to ask many more puzzling questions before we can pass all these exams and build positive relationships between all of us, in likeness with Nature itself. Yet, one thing is certain in these uncertain times — and it comes from my own experience as a school kid in the 80s — the sooner we start learning and doing our homework, and the more diligent we are, the more likely are we to have a better learning experience and even get to have some fun together while at it, in “our house”!
