We are the country of the metaphysical and immaterial: from the exaltations of always missing something, which never seems to leave us, to the journey through the melancholy of Fados, a country sings, seeming to say it's immune to greater feelings, sitting and waiting for something.
I have been in Portugal for twenty years, and I feel that the days are small and the memory is too short to remember the last day without a crisis. Greater or minor, the crises seem to be the blanket of Lusitanian lethargy, reactive by necessity and forgotten by the past by conscientious imperative.
Every time we find ourselves in a difficult situation, we placed the will and the strength to recover into making sense of the numbers. There was no general agreement on the structure, but the goals were common: to reduce the deficit and the growth of the debt. Following the prescription, the years to come would be more prosperous. Poverty would be reduced and the ultimate political goal achieved: the improvement of the people's lives.
The crisis didn’t reach the numbers first, however, in the meantime, it progressed inwards the people, triggering the fear of the disease. Society as we know it has stopped and is confined at home. Waiting impatiently for something: for the number of cases to increase, for the triggering of the virus inside the family, for the slowdown…
There is a crisis unlike any other, the calamity and emergency. This time, we react again, but lives are not saved by numbers, but instead with numbers.
It is known that something has already changed and that there is much more that remains to be changed. The COVID-19 dragged us home, shutdown companies, and strangled services that resist and remain open due to the needs and pleads of the population.
The European Central Bank, the European Commission, and national governments multiply their efforts, support, credits, and people's awareness. We are asked to keep our serenity, courage, and hope on the triumph of global society against the first truly global threat we face. All with the same certainty: the greatest damage will always be the victims of this epidemic outbreak.
Difficult months are ahead of us and the future is still uncertain. The solidarity of companies and society unfold into initiatives, movements, projects, activities ... the human’s warmth is felt through the gestures that are reproduced and multiplied: the hope in humanity is restored and we compassionately move forward together.
In a few years, we will understand how much we have changed during these long weeks in confinement, or if we have even changed at all, and we will write what kind of society emerged from the adversity: if we kept the same habits, if we became more devoted to affection and others, valuing proximity, contact, hugging and kissing, actions we are now prevented from giving. Or if, on the other hand, we will surrender to the immediate, to a carpe diem of feelings, aspirations, and actions.
As we wait at home, there is a country that acts and reacts as it can. We are experiencing an interruption of apathy, and missing our lives, from a few months ago, that only grows every day. Fado fell silent and there is a strange silence on the streets, but hope can be felt coming from the door of each house.
Quoting Saramago, I dare say that chaos will decode an order.
Lucas Sousa is an Economics student at Nova School of Business & Economics and is part of the Nova Debate - Debate Society of NOVA University.