Covid-19 crisis is showing the best of humanity

Richard Curtis’ modern holiday classic, Love Actually, opens with clips of people embracing one another at the arrivals terminal at Heathrow Airport and Hugh Grant’s voice.

He says: “Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport.

“General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere.

“Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends”.

It’s hard not be gloomy right now. President Cyril Ramaphosa said last week we were at war and that it was a war we had to win because the cost of failure – being human – would simply be too high.

It feels as though we are being invaded. The Covid-19 pandemic and our desperate efforts to fight it have forced us into hiding, bringing the world as we know it to a standstill and plunging our lives into a state of flux.

In two weeks – hopefully – when we emerge to begin the process of salvaging what we can and rebuilding, we’ll be coming in on the back foot and the recent economic downgrade will only push us further away from the starting blocks.

These are uncertain times. And they have brought to the fore some of the worst of humanity: corporate greed has given way to price hikes; selfishness to stockpiling and empty shelves; and blind fear to xenophobia and racism.

But they have also brought to the fore some of the best of humanity.

The national lockdown, in and of itself, is the end result of failed attempts to more gently “encourage” social distancing.

Put another way, so strong is the pull of other people – even in the face of mortal danger – that the army had to be called in to fight it for us.

It may have handicapped us at the moment but, in the long-term, it is telling that the seemingly simple act of just staying away from other people has proved so hard for us.

And it speaks – at least in part – to what is perhaps humanity’s strongest asset: we were not built to stand alone.

If you were to ask people what they missed most right now about “life before”, most would say other people.

Hopefully, when “life after” begins, they remember that. Because it will not be the same. Our world and way of life will be forever changed by what we are going through and change is hard, but history has taught us that it is also both necessary and possible.

It demands however, that we come together and that we don’t allow the worst of humanity to blind us to the best.

Because even now, in this dark hour, the best remains.

It reveals itself in big ways – when more than 1.5 million South Africa put their lives on the line to volunteer essential services – and in small ways.

Or, another reminder in a repeat of Grant’s words: “Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there”.

We need only to look for it.

Bernadette Wicks.

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