Let us be human, again.
written on the 20th of April, 2020.
The morning sun touches my bare chest as I step out on my balcony for a new day. A blackbird is singing his brand-new song, while the orange neighborhood cat is chasing a grasshopper under a blossoming tree in the garden of my below neighbor. I hear The Beatles singing through my speakers: ‘Ob-da-li, Ob-da-la, life goes on, la-la-la-la life goes on’. It sure does. The world, as we 21st century humans know it, has seemingly came to an abrupt ending, but the natural life seems to just move on as she has always done.
Maybe we crossed a line. Our needless desire for traveling to distant places, our fear of being alone or not being productive and our unnatural relationship with animals seems to have forced us to take a step back. In 2007, an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health already warned us that our mass-raising and slaughtering of animals for food could be the genesis of the next big pandemic.
The COVID-19 virus allegedly started in Wuhan, China where a life-slaughter market was blackening their streets. We seemed to have forgotten our place in the food-chain. Although it might sometimes feel like we are on top of the food-chain, or that we are even excluded from such a chain, right now it becomes obvious again that we are actually dangling somewhere at the bottom.
While we are all stuck inside our rooms, or with some luck in our gardens or balconies, we still hear songs sung by birds. We witness that Venice has swans swimming in their canals again and that the coastline of Italy is becoming the new playground for dolphins. Streets are becoming concrete fallen jungles. Jungles where, ironically, nature took humanlife out of it.
Of course, we will overcome this situation again at one point. Humanity has survived greater challenges. Exactly a century ago, humans survived the First World War and the Spanish Flu. The latter had a mortality rate of over 50%, with over 92% of the deaths occurring in people under 65. But still, we survived, and the notorious roaring twenties followed, where humanity prospered in innovating and living life.
For now, I can only imagine what a wave of freedom will flood our streets after this has passed. I hope we can mourn the death by celebrating life and readjusting our place within nature. Let us fight against the notion that we are machines, solely existing to produce for a boss or some thought-up higher entity. Let us roam the streets with joy, laughter and love. Let us bleed our pain, to free ourselves for love. Let us find our place in nature. Let us dance, sing and kiss in the streets. Let us be human, again.
Carijn and a tree, somewhere around Arnhem (2020, by Koen Casper).