Witoubou Newmai
As the world intensely focuses on health related issues, any other issue has taken a back seat. This is perhaps typical of any turbulent time where people often compromise their other needs and demands to focus on the overarching issue. Such is also a time where introduction of an element of levity into a given climate will be extremely hard.
However, amid this grimness, people are now slowly beginning to stretch and ask: for how long the prevailing situation may persist? What will happen to school going children? What will happen to the economy?
The emergence of such questions is one sign that there is a strong people’s tendency to move on as they struggle to adapt to the new normal.
Familiarity also plays in. Supposing a big war suddenly overwhelms or engulfs our towns, then for the next few days the streets will look deserted and the whole town will be overwhelmed by the war-ambience so that no common people will feel secure to venture out. However, if the same war persists for a longer period, long enough to transform the otherwise highly charged situation into boredom and monotony of the everyday violence, then the people will try to adjust and adapt themselves as they find their ways to ‘sustain life’. We have ample proof of such scenarios as journalists and other agencies present us from time to time how children can play in war-ravaged streets during the heights of prolonged wars. ‘Familiarity’ seems to have crowded out fear psychosis to a certain degree in such scenarios that people have a pinch of confidence to look for leisure.
The moot point here is: if this confidence can be the state of mind during the pandemic, we cannot afford to miss this ‘respite’ that gives us a better front view to re-describe our situation. We say this because the preponderance of COVID-19 pandemic ‘discourse’ and a great deal of anxiety it brings in collective mind have taken our society a distance away, at least for now, from the usual veritable fissures of quasi war----local conflicts, intercommunity strife and bellicose ism. In other words, the prevailing respite from strife has taken us a bit away from the usual situation which we suppose that such a respite gives us a better front view now to re-describe our situation in order to rectify our lens.
As commented earlier by this writer, the gravity of COVID-19 pandemic has altered every single usual pose of humanity or thrown all of us radically off-balance, thereby diverting every soul from the ‘usual’, we wonder whether we are willing to intervene and mediate the situation into our advantage during this ‘respite’.
As every day brings us some new material to contemplate, thanks to the prevailing pandemic, our society should be able to see more into the unfurling scenario in order to say and do more for us. But are we ready to see more into it in order to say and do more for us?
