These first days of spring should feel joyous, but with growing parts of the world in lockdown, and friends and family cutoff from one another as we hunker down, it is difficult to know what to feel … even as — just outside the window — nature goes on without us.
Many of us have turned to dystopias or ‘plague lit’, hoping to discover a glimpse of wisdom in an author’s exploration of what happens to a society when faced with disruption from an invisible foe.
“Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep-bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours’ sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across the thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in suffering that he cannot see.”
— Albert Camus, The Plague
So let’s all send kind words across the miles of land and sea and wish our neighbours, both near and far, the strength and compassion to navigate the strange new world we’ve found ourselves in.
