Despair

I am sad, I admit it. I'm afraid and anxious, I wake up at odd hours with nightmares... I guess I'm just one of the many billions of people for whom the world situation is taking its toll.

These two years of pandemic have taken their toll on many people, although for me, I have to admit, they have been no more terrifying than a trip on the witch's train. Twice the Covid has come home in this time and both times we have escaped barely disheveled by a broom in the cocorota. In my family and friends, there have been few serious cases and, although the numbers in the media were chilling, I have never experienced real fear for my health or the health of those closest to me.

But war has arrived and my hopes have suddenly fallen to the ground. Firstly, because wars, although apparently distant, in a globalized and digitalized world like ours, with nine nuclear powers, are always just a stone's throw away; and secondly because, although the movement in solidarity with the Ukrainian people has once again highlighted the best of the human species, the truth is that these actions are limited and there have been many more citizens who have run to the supermarket to hoard oil or milk than those who have turned to helping others.

It may seem silly to you, but empty shelves have made me sad. Every time I went to a supermarket and I saw a product that had been depleted, all I could hear inside me was a cry: "Every man for himself". It is true that the transport strike has joined the strike, it is true that some stores may have taken advantage of the situation to generate compulsive purchases and increase their margins ... It will be that I have been caught with my body cut, but how sad that we are not even able to prevent the lack of the basic products of the shopping basket to the neighbor! I guess it's the survival instinct that makes us hoard without caring that there is nothing left for the sibling. What if what was coming our way in the future was more serious? As long as we live in the bubble of consumption and welfare, we look like a civilized society, but as soon as even the smallest acquired comfort is taken away from us, we become wild beasts incapable of recognizing a brother in the other.

It may seem silly to you, but I was also very saddened by Will Smith's little scene at the Oscar gala. When the whole civilized world has united to condemn the cocky and bloodthirsty behavior of a man who thinks he has the right to invade a country because he doesn't like its government (presided over by a comedian, by the way), we find another man who, on his own scale, takes the law into his own hands by slapping the comedian who has touched his morale. I was confident that culture could save us from barbarism, and I see barbarism exalted in the sancta sanctorum of mass culture, the delivery of the mythical film awards, before the eyes of our children.

I am naturally optimistic, but allow me to cry a little today because of all this, because it seems to me that I am seeing the card fall at the base of the house of cards of the apparently happy Western society, because today I smell the rotten smell of a fruit whose peel made it seem healthy, because men and women of the 21st century are still capable of the worst and we are being whipped...

Hopefully in a few years I will be able to remember this article and laugh remembering the low point of that April 1, 2022. In the meantime, I have only one hope left: the one we will live in a couple of weeks on a hill with three crosses and in a nearby tomb. Come, Lord, do not delay. Maranatha.