Withered

We are all trying hard to "turn the page". We do it with so many wounds to heal because Covid has dried up "inside" us.

We do not go out more or certainly less. Survey radars document that our relationships with others have dropped by an average of 30 percent in two years. We no longer go to eat a pizza and, when we do, it is with an implicit and personal heartbeat: the locals complain of a 50 percent decrease. We no longer invite for fear of meeting with unvaccinated or potential "monatti". Those who believe go to church much less for fear of contagion and our beautiful parishes are increasingly deserted.

We do a lot less volunteering. The appeal of all associations that have little or no turnover is known. Those with white hair resist, the others do not arrive.

Let's close the shutters and shutters first: it will be two years of fear, it will be the rising political and social uncertainty, it will be rampant selfishness.
Maybe ... but in the meantime we take refuge in the house ahead of time. Isolation, confinement and general uncertainty involve a burden for our mind that is not easy to manage: fear.
And then the sense of loneliness and abandonment during the period of isolation at home or during hospitalization or waiting for the result of a tampon play a fundamental role.

Family doctors are tormented by our needs (not all of them!), Psychologists and psychiatrists register a colossal increase in patients, the wards of psychiatric hospitals are full, rash gestures (femicide, homicide-suicide) are in the newspapers every day. The news proves it. Families unable to buy medicine are growing by 20 percent, but the fact is no longer newsworthy.

We no longer have children while the growth of those looking for a nice gesture of love in dogs and cats is constant: just look at the number of shops for the welfare of animals. And, at the same time, requests for the adoption of children, both in Italy and abroad, have collapsed. With all due respect for animals, the headlines of many newspapers are true: "Empty cradles, full kennels".

Paradoxically, the economic flow registers a gradual rising of products for personal well-being while many flows of solidarity are deflated, bringing aid to those who need it most in the world. And, meanwhile, the "offers" in churches and humanitarian channels are well beyond a decline that is close to 50 percent.

It's melancholy, but that's the way it is. It hurts, but it is the reality that brings increases everywhere, skyrocketing bills, layoffs, insecurity.
It is the new society that emerges after two years of masks, over 150 thousand deaths (with all due respect to those who say they are not real!), "Stop and go" schools, such as restaurants and bars.
Let's take a look at the shutters lowered in the suburbs and in the villages from January 1st 2022! Facts not words.
Of course it is true that our industries, artisans and traders are "lightning strikes of war" and the GDP is more than 6.5 percent, but this happens because we are a brilliant people, with an inexhaustible imagination, a constancy, a will, a rare force, very rare indeed. And it will be another beautiful post-war period.

But it is the other post-war period that is binding us, the one "inside". We will certainly overcome it by rediscovering and dusting off listening, humanity, joviality, solidarity.
And, perhaps, we will be able to return, with the images of Mario Soldati, Traveling on the Po, to rediscover all that we have been over the centuries.
As Pope Francis says: "Let us reopen our hearts and find hope".

Gian Mario Ricciardi
NP March 2022