And then one day, everything changed. It felt like the world stopped turning. The borders were closed. Shops, restaurants, bars… People stayed home. No one in the streets. No more cars. Not a sound. People started to worry. But they also started to show solidarity and to look after – as far as possible – each other.
Yesterday I went for a walk in the forest next to my house, with my two energetic little boys. Alone, without passing anyone (something unheard of in the little Switzerland of Luxembourg, which is usually teeming with tourists and city dwellers at the slightest ray of sunshine), we took the time to really look at the world around us. On this spring day, I heard the birds singing. I saw the trees regain their foliage and the wild flowers emerge from the earth still covered with autumn leaves. And I thought about something I had read on social networks… “It’s as if nature had punished us and sent us back to our room to reflect on what we have done”, as I do with my children when they have done something stupid… and here we are, all punished, in our rooms, to question ourselves. To reconsider our priorities.
I look out of my bedroom window (well, my improvised office area in my living room) and observe. The stream that runs through my garden continues to flow. The wind is blowing (very hard and very cold, by the way). And the sun, which in recent months has only shone by its absence, is now illuminating the countryside and the empty towns and helping us to keep our spirits up (“Fortunately, it’s not raining!”)
What if the solution was there? What if it had always been there? Right in front of us? What if all our energy came from there? From this nature that nothing seems to affect. Which renews itself every day, as if nothing had happened…
When we can go out again, nothing will have changed outside. But I hope we will have changed.
