‘How beautiful!’ my eyes are tinkling, my heart feels fulfilled. ‘How genius!’ I keep on watching the images, admiring the geniality, reading more details. ‘How resilient are we?!’

I am reading about how in India old train wagons are converted into COVID-19 isolations units. The 20,000 old train wagons are converted into hospital-alike units, including sanitary facilities and oxygen bottles. In total they will be able to keep 320,000 patients isolated.

At the same time, at the other side of the world, the US army is building field hospitals on urban squares, and emptied hotels are converted into shelters for homeless people or isolation units for quarantined people.

None of us have lived through a similar situation, a global pandemic as COVID-19, yet we are all finding our way to get through it. Governments have to take decisions and develop strategies they might even have thought impossible; yet, they do it. Minimum wage was a questioned taboo in many countries, yet today many people are living on kind of a minimum wage. Many countries managed to rapidly scale up the capacity of their hospitals, while health care givers have been re-educated to deal with a disease they never ever dealt with before; yet, they did it.

Blurred Lines

At the same time, while many businesses closed their books, waiting for a new story to start after the ‘break’, others re-invented themselves. Armani produces medical clothes, instead of haute-couture; Tesla, Ford, and other car manufacturers are producing ventilators instead of cars; app developers are developing apps to track COVID-19 instead of their usual apps.

Whole at the sudden, the lines between various sectors are blurred. The army becomes a health care facilitator, the manager becomes a holograph (almost), the mother a mouth mask producer.

Our daily commute is converted into a walk to our desk, our annual holiday is converted into a staycation, our Saturday party night is converted into a Saturday cosy at home night. Our friends and colleagues turned into flat characters on our computer screen, or voices on our smartphone. Our neighbours became again our closest company; and the journey to the supermarket an exciting and at the same time frightening trip, balancing between the risk for the virus and the need to be out.

None of us have lived through a similar situation, yet we are all living it.

Resiliency or Resistance

I’ve talked last bog about the Maya ruins of Copan in Honduras, the Inca ruins of Machu Pichu in Peru, or even the Khmer ruins of Angkor Watt in Cambodia. All of them are but the reminders of once mighty civilisations that ruled at least their part of the world. Invincible and genius, they thought their times would never come to an end.

Yet, when unforeseen and exceptional natural disasters, famine, diseases, or conflict stroke down, they were forced to surrender. Their complex civilisations weren’t able to cope with the presented challenge. They had to downscale, adapt or abandon entirely the lifestyle and some even living hood they were used to. They had to be resilient.

As we are all now giving up a part of our lifestyle and some even living hood. We as well have to adapt to the challenges COVID-19 poses us, and downscale a part of the standard of living we were used to.

Yet, in history many civilisations did not manage to let go of what they had, to face their own vulnerability and even mortality; many did not manage to swallow their pride and feeling of superiority and make the necessary adaptation they had to. They lacked the necessary resilience, and resisted.

Yes, We Can

Yet, what I see today does make me hopeful. And proud at the same time. None of us have experienced a challenge as big as COVID-19, yet we are all coping with it. No individual, no company, no country is living on a business-as-usual scenario, yet, life is continuing.

It might not be life as you had imagined, or wished for, but it is life nonetheless. We are using our untapped potential of resilience. And resilience will help us through.

This article is part of the series of Hope in Times of Corona. Read

• how this times of self-isolation should not mean loneliness,
• how you can contribute to this battle, 
• how gratitude lights up the dark,  
• how united we will stand strong
• on the most util strategy in awake of a crisis 
• how I got blown of my feet as well, but caught by many caring hands, 
• how being calm can get us through the storm.
• about Love in Times of Corona
• how to discover your own talents 
• why we need stories to hold on to 
• how you can be creative and innovative.
• how to spend your mot valuable assets in times of Corona.
• how to listen to the sound of silence. 
• How breate taking Corona really is.
• discover the other freedoms Corona has shown us, 
• about the new-born freedom Corona gave us.
• about another way to exceed your personal bubble.
• about the position of nature in this entire story
• about nature bouncing back

Or wait until tomorrow, when I’ll shine another light on yet another positive corner of this dark times.