DAY 30: THE THEORY OF TRANSITION

Miriam 30 – Thirty days, Andre. Thirty days of the diary, thirty days of mixed emotions, of tears of joy and fear, of disregarded waits and new hopes, thirty days that our blog is online. Thirty days with all our friends who, like us, tell their days for no other reason than being part of this long, shared and welcoming sofa where, on alternate evenings, we cried (enough), thought (a lot), smiled (why not?), listened to (beautiful) songs.

We felt Italians, proud, united.

We imagined what it will be like when everything ends, we asked ourselves what we will do first, as soon as we can return to our previous life, hoping that this could happen the same way our confinement happened thirty days ago. With a unified networks broadcast, where our prime minister will say: “Fellow Italians, it’s over. We won”.

We will win, because I’m sure of it and because the curve is flattening every day more.

We will win because we are letting love prevail over hate, altruism over selfishness, partnership over solitude.

We will win because perhaps we learned our lesson.

But I’m not sure we will be able to immerse ourselves again in the race that is our life, as we had just made a pit stop, ready to resume the lap of the track we were covering at 300 km/h.

Andrea 30 – A few days ago we talked about DAY 1, all caps: the one in which, to the cry “war is over”, we see ourselves celebrate, finally free, hugging each other in the streets. There is a side of this terrible period that fascinates me, mysteriously: the fact that many things are changing and that every day, new human behaviours add a piece to our future. Let me explain this: I love my job, because it allows me to be a bit of a psychologist, a bit of an observer and a bit of an entrepreneur. And from these three points of view, “forced” a bit by my role, a bit by this Covid situation, I gather on my notebook, by the minute, the signs of the change, through the lens of the behaviour of those who live a certain moment, appreciate a product or a service and then maybe buy it. Thanks to these stimuli, I am reaching a conclusion that I called the theory of transition: DAY 1 will never be as we’ve been expected for 30 days. We won’t hear any siren announce the end of hostilities, there won’t be Americans in the streets, supplying dark chocolate and cigarettes. This theory originates from the fact that the return to a pseudo-normal life will be slow and diluted, and that our new routine will be the result of the behaviours and the habits we are already taking on. We can’t completely imagine it yet, because we are still a bit enslaved by the mental pattern of a world that, probably, no longer exists. The comeback won’t be a comeback, but a slow change towards something different that is already under way. There are companies already producing medical masks instead of clothes. There are companies already producing fewer bottles of alcohol and more of disinfectant. There are companies already investing in the purchase of vans to increase the shopping deliveries. We ourselves have already learned how to make pizza and bread from scratch, and we have already bought mats and dumbbells to train in our living room. We ourselves, therefore, will go to the pizzeria once too few, and perhaps we will give up the gym membership. We have already changed. We already are in the new time of DAY 1, from day 1. The theory of transition.