By George Kyprianou:
In the face of the expiration of the strict restrictive measures, the gradual return of the citizens to the so-called "normality" is attempted, that is, to the life of the pre-Koronian era. The word is written and reported on channels, news and reports. But I have a reservation about what we mean by "normality" and whether what we actually experienced behind closed doors was just a parenthesis.
It is already known, to use a modern example, that when a computer is infected with a virus, it needs to be cleaned and restarted. Sometimes complete deletion and reinstalling of all programs and data. So I wonder if we should do the same thing. In other words, to delete and reinstall all those that were weighed and measured at the time of incarceration and were deemed beneficial, essential and worthy to continue. So the term "normality" really needs to be redefined.
True, how many times have we not heard and read concerns and confessions, publicly, about the many good things that the coronaire has brought us, apart from illness and death. What do we really need to know about what life really needs? Didn't we meet, a little more and a little more, somewhere in the empty time and space of our inaction, something from our deepest self, the truth of family, friendship, faith? Didn't we realize how much of what we were living through was worth our time, effort, stress, and sacrifice? Didn't we characterize many of our lives in vain and useless? In general, haven't we seen the futility of pre-coronary life in vain for many of us? So much is the change, that I have the impression, that from now on we will divide history into pre-corona and then coronation, in addition to the limit of Christ on earth.
We have seen, admittedly, with different eyes and with a different crisis, life, society, the planet, ourselves. For anyone who wants, worries and searches and in circumstances and opportunities meaning for life, many are now perceived and defined differently:
- Work as a need for survival and blessing and not as chores and a cause of grumbling and discomfort.
- Time as an opportunity to exercise patience, prayer, offering and not wasteful, pointless and meaningless hyperactivity.
- Culture as a way of communication and society, cultivation and elevation, as creation and not as commercialism and exploitation.
- The other person as a neighbor, as a co-person and not as another, another, foreign and distant.
- Friendship as a real need for mutual support and oxygen of hope and strength and not as relaxation and faceless meeting.
- Beauty as a natural reflection of joy, optimism and tenderness and not as a result of interventions and overlaps.
- Health as a precious good of all and not as an object of luxury for some.
- Death as coming in the middle of the night, always waiting, indistinguishable and relentless and not as a late and ultimate enemy.
- The world as a neighborhood and not as a vast and indifferent planet.
- God as a person and a source of goodness, love, reinforcement and consolation and not as an idea, tradition, duty and obligation.
- Faith as a challenge and testimony and not as a theory and self-evident.
- Life as a precious gift, unique and fragile and not as a given and invincible.
- I don't know if the corona came to stay or it will be a bad memory. I am also not concerned with what will happen in everyone's life around the world. However, I believe that he came to "restart" us. And the question that arises is simple. Back to "normalcy" or futility? It depends on us what we have gained and what we have gained so many weeks "in our coffers". It depends on us how much vanity we will water our lives again.
George Kyprianou
Theologian - Teacher, President of the Cultural Association ROMIOSYNI