Look at the Bright Side of the Coronavirus – By Garba Diallo, director of Crossing Borders

The CORONA Quarantine is not only limiting our mobility, bringing our everyday lives in turmoil and breaking down our social pursuits, but it might also expanding our imagination and compassion toward those millions of people whose daily lives in fact have been quarantine for decades, years, months for weeks by powerful people.

Sadly, quarantining is an everyday reality

The hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants currently held in slave concentration camps in Libya, in swamps and mosquito infested camps in South Sudan, on islands on Lesbos in Greece, on the Mexico-US border where a pregnant woman fell from the Trump wall and died on the spot today, refugee camps in Bangladesh, in the DRC, in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the jungles on the margins of rich cities in Europe and the indigenous people fighting for their survival (and ours) in Amazonia etc etc etc.

Unlike the Coronavirus, the driving causes of those limitations are purely man-made out of greed, sometimes short sightedness or even unconsciousness and lack of compassion. Lack of understanding and respect for the fact that the wellbeing of people everywhere is inextricably interconnected to us – and our interconnectedness is inherent in the globalised world we have created.

Thus, let’s turn the limitations the Coronavirus has imposed on us into opportunities – we can simply ask ourselves “how can we turn the situation we are in into an opportunity for something meaningful? How can we seize the extra time to reflect honestly and deeply on what the coronavisrus in fact is teaching us? What might it even teach us to let go of)

Let’s seize the opportunity to reconnect with ourselves and those we love. Let’s take advantage of the online platforms to phone, email, chat with those we forgot or didn’t have time to reconnect with, because were too busy running around – to care for one another.

Let’s also clear, clean and re-arrange our indoors, bookshelves, old CDs, clean, fold and give away the many clothes, the booths, the shoes, we know we will hardly have the time or the needs to use.

Let’s clean our gardens (those who have the luxury), parks and other surrounding spaces to help it them be clean, healthy and beautiful.

Let’s be creative in making and eating according to our needs to avoid hoarding food from the shops.

Let’s go for a long and fresh walk and enjoy the opportunities while we consider and support those in need in our families, neighbours, friends, networks and other fellow humans and other beings we share this planet with.

Let’s do some non-violent or non-competitive sports, like meditation, yoga, Thai-Chi and dances.

Let’s read the books we did not have the chance to read and read again the books we read long time ago.

Let’s listen to our favourite music while we open old photo albums and rejoice in and reflect upon the good old days when we were younger and our kids were babies, teens and parents were with us, younger and stronger

Let’s recognise, appreciate and share the privileges we are blessed to have and enjoy. Let’s use our position of power and influence to consider, talk about and do something to help relieve the pains of and sufferings of those who have been unfortunate to find themselves in the wrong places, at the wrong time with wrong people in power shaping the circumstances of their lives.

Finally, also remember that limiting our often-unnecessary mobility is good for Mother Earth as it reduces the severity, frequency and size of our footprints on Her body and soul

I stop here and walk the talk by going for a long walk and do some of this I wrote about above

Stay calm, safe and smiling

Love and respect

Garba