Histori Personale

What the pandemic taught me I want to share with all of you

What the pandemic taught me I want to share with all of you

When the first news started that the virus was spreading all over the world and was already considered a pandemic, someone asked: What did we do to deserve this?

I replied: That I said aloud that I was happy. And in fact I was.

I was just divorced, but in fact I was not alone. I was with my children, with friends with whom I was spending more time than usual, traveling and writing. I had started a new life.

What I learned from the divorce, but especially from the pandemic was that not everything can be planned. There are things that cannot be calculated and that depend on how life brings them.

So we have to wait as the future came. I focused on the present and the first purchase I made were a pair of pink skates. With it I could do laps around the neighborhood. Something I had never done before.

Covid reminded me that life is short and the best thing I can do is live it, not just endure it, but live it. This life is not ideal, but it is all we have.

This year is full of masks, frequent and fixed hand washing, but I do not want to remember it for such. I want to remember it as the year of home, family, children. I want to remember everything we did and not what we could not do.

Yes, the world is damaged, but its beauty is still there. I searched for it and I found it.

* Maggie Smith, author of four books. Letter written for The Guardian and adapted in Albanian