COLLISIONI

Your name - Silvia (Sinthya)

Age - 31

Your education - IED: Product Design

Your job - Yoga teacher

Birthplace - Milan (IT)

Actual location - Sydney (AU)

 

1 - This pandemic forced the majority of us into living a situation none has ever experienced before, namely quarantine. What do you miss most  from the time before quarantine?

 

Occasions of gathering, whether cultural, recreational, of any kind, together with friends, relatives and even with strangers, going to the beach, teaching yoga in a class of 30 people...

 

2 - First came the sanitary emergency and thereafter the economic one, are you more scared of catching the virus or of losing your job?

 

I am afraid of falling ill, nobody is immune... health comes before anything else, if that lacks life is meaningless.

 

3 - How do you spend or have you spent your time during quarantine? If this extraordinary situation has brought you to make drastic choices in your life, can you tell us briefly?

 

Living on the other side of the world, luckily the virus arrived late and therefore safety and restraint measures have been put into effect right away, the “slow fuse” here worked quite well, the government  did manage everything quickly enough, I have never had to spend 24 hours at home without going out and the same restrictions are milder. I am worried because I observe what is happening in my city, in my country and how my relatives and my friends cope with this situation that is suffocating them.

 

4 - During the first days of quarantine around the end of February and the beginning of March, on the web appeared some articles by major news organizations about a very specific subject and with titles such as: “Coronavirus frightens, climate does not. How takes form the perception of risk.”

Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever considered that the experience of this pandemic could be taken as a lesson on climate change?

 

Surely this forced confinement compelled everyone to question things, to reconsider, to get informed and to understand how to play a role in a global issue which has reached all of us, rich, poor, East and West, without any privileged immune.

Until something does not touch you closely, the perception of risk is very faint for almost everyone, in a general way, but the fact that the pandemic has stricken all of us has quite arisen people conscience and the overall awareness increased.

The climate and how it is changing and is being wrecked because of us, is something that could be “handled” just partially, progress includes some losses and in this scenario the losses are climatic.

 The virus that nowadays is shaking our lives up has been created and spread by men, Nature will manage to fight it since it is artificial, but before then there will be casualties.

Here you can hear “embrace the change”, maybe not all evils come to harm, even if it means make people suffer and wreck havoc in our lives.

I hope that something changes when all of this will be over or at least when there won't be any more “danger”, but I do not trust much the human race and I believe in time circularity...maybe all of us will die because of an asteroid as happened to dinosaurs and we will be born again from our ashes, wiser and more  mindful than ever!

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5 - Pandemic has already brought severe changes in everyone's everyday life, and it will bring more and more. Did it unleash new doubts about your own future and/or the one of your family? Which ones?

 

This pandemic persuaded me even more of an idea I already had before moving here, that is living “here and now”, enjoying the present and do not exceeding in planning the future ( to a certain point, this is meaningless, the “uncertainty card” is always around the corner as we noticed!), being multitasking, being able to “resell” myself,  managing to bring out secret weapons in hard times, accepting changes and learning from mistakes, respecting the world we live in and taking part into the mantaining of the balance, taking action to improve, enjoying the actual important things in life, which could be counted on one hand, appreciating even more the “inmaterial”, loving each other.

 

6 -The advanced capitalism in which we live made us believe that nothing could be stopped: the virus proved the contrary. Planet Earth basically had a month to breath free, all the activities or the majority of them had to cease: do you consider one or more of them, on balance, unnecessary? Which one of them would you like to see coming to a stop?

 

There are plenty of thing we could get by without, others are basics, food, health and affections.

If I could chose, I would give a golden medal to who provides this benefits: food industries, who works in the farming sector, hospitals and all those heroes who study for years and save human lives or at least they make them better, the ones who contributes to the mantaining of a balance between mind and body (Yoga and alike, healthy phisical activities, psycologists, help and support, caritas...), teachers and education.

I will close down unnecessary activities such as the uncultured television and all that gravitates around it, the rotten politics, I would reconsider all the wages of congressmen, football players and public figures who do not contribute constructively to society and I would diminish the significance of fashion and the excessive fees that come with that (shows, models, over-priced dresses).

 

7 - Some philosophers, sociologists, intellectuals hypothesize and/or hope that after this situation of quarantine and pandemic could happen a change in society, do you think it would be possible? (Explain us your answer)

 

It's good to believe in a better world and trust in others, “Hope is the last thing to be lost” as says an ancient greek idiom.

But reality is that the time we live in, as ignorance and self-absorption prevail on the “good” part of this world, does not give me much hope, what I wish is that everyone was more thoughtful and that they tried to act, everyone in his own way,  and ensure a future for the next generations.

A world where the society was less divided in hierarchies and where bargain was the new way of trade, that would be a nice experiment, and throughout years it would help to improve life on this planet without anymore waste and overflow (I recommend you to watch the french movie “The green planet”).

 

8 - Choose a picture that in your opinion depicts this historical period we are living in and attach it to the answering e-mail.