It’s Gonna Be Okay

  

It is May 2024, about five years since the emergency of COVID-19, and we can still feel the consequences and signs left by this devastating pandemic.

Fear, anxiety, depression—this is the legacy of COVID-19. It's an experience we wish to forget due to the losses it caused, but one we must remember for the lessons it taught us. History continuously repeats events, and our generation is certainly not the first to feel the burden of a pandemic.

Let’s take a few steps back, about seven centuries… In 1374, during the last year of a long and interesting life, the humanist and poet Francesco Petrarca observed that his society had lived with “this plague, without equal in all the centuries,” for over twenty-five years. His luck and misfortune had been to survive many friends and family who had died before him, many because of this devastating disease. Petrarch, one of the most eloquent voices of his time, spoke on behalf of an entire generation of plague survivors, after the pandemic of 1346-53 and its periodic returns. He skillfully wielded the pen to express the collective pain of his society in a profound and personal way, recognizing the effects of so much loss and suffering. In the aftermath of the particularly devastating year of 1348, when the plague engulfed the Italian peninsula, his good friend Giovanni Boccaccio, in his Decameron, drew an indelible portrait of young Florentines fleeing their plague-stricken city, waiting for the storm to pass and telling a hundred stories.

For his part, Petrarch documented the experience of the plague for several decades, probing its changing effects on his psyche. The Black Death had intensified his perception of the sweetness and fragility of life, especially in the face of the disease that had manifested in so many different forms. The poet had big questions and was looking for answers. 

Pandemic according to Petrarch

“The year 1348 left us alone and defenseless,” he declared at the beginning of his Epistles, his great project of sharing carefully selected versions of his correspondence with friends.

But what was the meaning of life after all those deaths? Had it turned him or someone else for the better? Could love and friendship survive the plague?

Petrarch witnessed the loss of all the people he loved most, including his friends—and later, his son John. He wept deeply over the “absence of friends.” Friendship was his joy and pain. He compensated for this loss by writing eloquent letters to the living and rereading his favorite missives to the dead, preparing the best for publication. In an age of almost immediate communication through email, phone, and social media, it is easy to forget how important correspondence was as a technology to bridge social distances. The letters, as Cicero wrote, and whom Petrarch greatly admired, made the absent present.

In his Epistles to posterity, he wrote: “I had complained that the year 1348 had deprived me of almost all the consolations of life because of the death of my friends. Now what am I going to do in my 61st year?” Petrarch observed that the second pandemic was even worse and that it almost emptied Milan and many other cities. He was now determined to write with a different voice, not complaining but fighting the adversities of bad luck.

The plague of which Petrarch speaks left 14th-century Italy with the same lessons that we contemporaries should have grasped from the traumatic experience of COVID-19. The pandemic of five years ago has forged men and women incapable of fighting to save their own future. The result of this is the greater detachment that has developed among people, who have withdrawn into themselves, becoming completely disinterested.

Although we are seven centuries ahead of Petrarch, mentally and humanly we have regressed. In general, we resist disease better than people did in Petrarch’s day—the direct result of better nutrition, better health, modern hygiene, and medical innovation. However, the uneven experience of COVID-19 has highlighted these persistent vulnerabilities that we ignore at our peril.

The obvious changes in behavior that we have become accustomed to today originate from the wrong way we faced this pandemic. For example, according to statistics, in Italy, more than six out of ten young people (62%) have changed their vision of the future following the pandemic: only 22% believe the future will be better, while 40% think it will be worse. There is no promise of improvement and well-being for the younger generations, and in the face of an unknown future, uncertainty (49%) and anxiety (30%) prevail, which in some cases turn into fear (15%) and pessimism (13%), especially when confronted with events whose dimensions and consequences go beyond the ability of individuals to predict and intervene. 

So the question is, is everything gonna be okay?

This famous expression used during the emergency should now be reconsidered. Nothing went well, especially when we decided to face this difficulty in an individualistic way, despite the many deaths. We did not all bend like brooms, in unison, as Giacomo Leopardi said. We have not been able to express enough mutual solidarity, and this is still affecting the present.

However, Petrarch used his remarkable literary talent to grasp the essence of this collective experience. His understanding of the value of love and friendship intensified due to the plague, and these feelings became richer and deeper precisely because everything was endangered by illness. The dead didn’t disappear as long as he kept them alive.

Amid our anxieties about what the future might hold, his is a voice from the past, speaking to posterity, challenging us to be creative in our response to a tragic period of difficulty common to all.

Then we, like Petrarch, are still in time to take back our lives, accepting whatever it has to offer, negative or positive, and grasping the lessons hidden between the lines, remembering the strength to react.

 Today’s Blogger

Hello, I'm Beatrice Scifoni, a liceo classico student and an 18-year-old enthusiast with a passion for exploring new horizons and discovering diverse cultures. From a young age, I've been interested in travelling and connecting with people from around the world. 

In my spare time I work as a tour guide at the Monastery of San Benedetto in Subiaco, where I find joy in sharing the rich history and cultural heritage with visitors. However, my most cherished experiences come from the lasting friendships I've made with individuals from various nationalities during my time at a NATO military base in Belgium. 

I’m glad to be part of Let’s Blog Staff and I hope you’ll enjoy following my posts!