Stay home, flatten the curve. But what does home mean? During Corona, for some people it meant a lot of quality time with those who they wished they had more time for; for others it was like entering the dark cave they tried to escape by going to work or the pub.

In times of Corona the masks fall of, as I described in another post. It might be as well time to take off your own mask. What have you constructed between your four walls? What is lacking? What is too much? What have you been running for; or what have you been not able to accomplish due to the rat race of our society?

Domestic Violence

Home should be a safe heaven, but another crack that became tremendously visible was the one of domestic violence. When doors got locked, some homes changed into infernos. Codewords were set in place to outcry for help without endangering one’s life. Emergency shelters were set up to help victims of domestic violence. Going home was the last thing they wanted to do.

Go Home

Going home was for some almost a mission impossible. Indian construction workers walking hundreds of kilometres out of fear for starvation; while other people got collected in humanitarian flights to make their way back ‘home’.

‘Go back home, here is no place for you,’ it was the quote of Australian premier Scott Morrison. Australians first. But what if there is no ‘back home’? various New Zealanders decided to turn back to the country they were born in, but where they had lived less time than in Australia. But today it turned out they were no Australian. Many people all over the world faced the same destiny.

‘The feeling of being a foreigner’ never became as tangible as during Covid, she said. I admit. I speak five languages, but during Covid, in public I only spoke English. Tried to mask my accent, hide whatever made me more foreign. But I remained a foreign object, possible carrier of the virus in some people’s eyes.

Stay Home

My home was here, when we were forced to stay home. ‘Home is not a house’. It is a feeling. A feeling of being safe. A feeling of being able to be yourself, without potential danger, without potential pressure, without the need to have to fit in or adapt.

Home is the place you can come home after work, exchange your costume for comfortable clothes; where you can sing in the shower, without being embarrassed. Where you can go to bed at 6pm if you want to or sleep in.

Home is the station where you walk out of the high-speed train of society. It is where you can put your suitcase down, unpack your belongings and your soul. Exchange your harness for vulnerability. Stop talking and start breathing. Stop running and just be. That is home supposed to be.

To them who suffer domestic violence, to them who are squeezed between too many commitments; to them who are living in a house with the wrong people and/or for the wrong people; their house is just another station, another part of the rat race. To them, the train never stops. And staying at home, means a steep curve of psychological and emotional problems.

To them there is no safe heaven. They have to keep on running. Exhausted.

Living Fast and Slow

When our train starts running again at full speed, make sure you have a station to hop off whenever you need it. Make sure you have a safe heaven, a place you can just be. Take the time to ‘Hygge’ take the time to find your home; take the time to understand what home really means to you, and how you can create it.

Reach out for help if yours isn’t what a home is supposed to be; and reach out to help them who are in need. Solidarity 3.0. Governments should facilitate programs against domestic violence, and set in place measure to facilitate a better working-life balance, not only for the father figures.

We’ll have to live fast and slow, find a balance between family and work; between burn-out and bore-out; between loneliness, and overwhelm by social obligations. Find a balance between both possible paces of society. Take time to find that balance, allow others to find and live up to that balance for them. Don’t judge, don’t fight, but reach out.

Once the doors will go open again, we will walk out on a total other mindset. We will know what ‘home’ really means, and why the rat race sometimes better shall wait for those who really matter to you.

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

1. How this too shall pass
2. how this times of self-isolation should not mean loneliness,
3. how you can contribute to this battle, 
4. how gratitude lights up the dark,  
5. how united we will stand strong
6. on the most util strategy in awake of a crisis 
7. how I got blown of my feet as well, but caught by many caring hands, 
8. how being calm can get us through the storm.
9. about Love in Times of Corona
10. how to discover your own talents 
11. why we need stories to hold on to 
12. how you can be creative and innovative.
13. how to spend your mot valuable assets in times of Corona.
14. how to listen to the sound of silence. 
15. How breath taking Corona really is.
16. discover the other freedoms Corona has shown us, 
17. about the new-born freedom Corona gave us.
18. about another way to exceed your personal bubble.
19. about the position of nature in this entire story
20. about nature bouncing back
21. about the crucial choice between resilience and resistance
22. about the game to play
23. about star gazing in dark times
24. About looking for Meaning
25. About how Music Connects
26. about what Easter and Corona have in Common
27. About the Shark and the Turtle
28. About the Irony of Distance
29. Why to Hold on
30. Fake News
31. about The Big Unknown we live at
32. about Feeling Alive
33. About turning obstacles into opportunities
34. about what the Birthday of my nephew learned me about life 
35. About where we should go from here?
36. About coping with incertitude
37. About the Great War and the Great Pandemic, and we should not forget
38. about history’s most important message, echoed by corona
39. How one country could rule them all
40. About how to prevent the next Green Pandemic 
41. about how we are experiencing a new episode of our history books
42. about when the poppy flowers
43. about what’s in a number
44. masks off, how a friend in need is a friend indeed
45. What’s Next. after we flattened the curve?
46. how will our personal story look like in a post-corona world?
47. why we should never let a good crisis go too waste.
48. How Spring can happen in Autumn
49. How to unlock the lockdown
50. Why education matters
51. How we can give meaning to the meaningless deaths. (rethink health care)
52. The remarkable marketability of health, or not?
53. the remarkable rewards of health
54. The queeste for global health care 
55. Health Heroes
56. Pains and Gains 
57. Solidarity 3.0
58. Work-Life Balance

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