By His Grace Most Rev Prakash Mallavarapu,
Archbishop of Vizag
Entire humanity across the nations and all its routine activities was brought to its knees by Covid-19, Corona Virus. The confident and secure as well as the weak and vulnerable sections in the society are suddenly confronted by this invisible but real and life-threatening enemy, sparing no nation and no section or individual in the society. It has no friend or foe and that is why everyone feels threatened of the possible attack from this mysterious international traveller across the Globe!
The whole world received a sudden wake-up call and the humanity wakes only to realize how ill-equipped and inadequate are the available means and methods to face this multi-pronged attack of Covid-19. Availability of a tested vaccine to arrest this pandemic is at this point of time a distant dream! The threat is so real and so urgent is the need to protect people from this virus that nations across the world are on the run to creatively take steps both to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and also attend to the affected people.
The Fear of Uncertainty
Uncertainty and anxiety are what the humanity is faced with. In the midst of all this, everyone should appreciate and acknowledge the generous and commendable services of “Healthcare Providers,” in both, the public as well as private sectors. With all the limitations and uncertainties they are doing to the best of their capacity “to protect life,” both by preventive care and by curative care. Their efforts are human efforts, after all!
The rest of us should stand by such generous hands and by the civil authorities who are constantly engaged in the administrative measures by extending the best of our cooperation to them. We all can do this by sticking on to “social distancing” in this period of lockdown that is promulgated. Let us remain safe and help others to be safe!
Covid-19 makes us see the limits of the human potential to plan and execute: Human capacity to plan things ahead is one of the dynamic principles at work in the world. Making plans for the future, short term or long term, is one of the naturally inbuilt capacities human beings are endowed or blessed with.
The creative energies are instrumental for many organized events that are conducted and many beautiful edifices that are built. In making plans various factors are considered like the available and necessary resources, and with optimism we humans try to keep moving forward. But, it is true that not all the plans are successfully implemented/materialized.
The failure is not necessarily due to a faulty planning but it is due to human inability to foresee and human limitations to take full control of all the factors. What is presumed, but necessary, as favourable and conducive conditions defy prediction with certainty. A convincing blue print will be lying on the desk but one is unable to take it forward. That is how we experience helplessness as something real in human life.
The unforeseen not only interferes with the progress of the said project but it stares at the human face to confront the truth: one is not in full control of the situation. Human life is controlled by so many factors.
We are Inter Dependent
Covid-19 Corona Virus has shown us our inter-dependence or mutual dependence: Covid-19 has exposed the hollowness and shallowness in the tall claims of the so called developed or developing nations about the progress and growth. How delicately balanced are the economies of most of the nations is made evident in the collapse of economies due to a crisis in one part of the world; one major economy collapses, shock waves go across the world stock markets.
The barter system of old that is continued in the dynamics of exports and imports between the nations show that one nation can be financially secure only if other nations are also secure because there is the factor of “mutual dependence,” irrespective of the varying cost of the products imported and exported. Not all the nations today are able to produce all the products that people in a particular state need.
If for instance, a powerful country like USA is helplessly looking towards Europe and Asia for medicine and medical equipment to face the Covid-19 pandemic. What more can one say about (mutual) dependency? Here the point driven home is that we all need one another. As individual human beings are inter-dependent and mutually dependent, at the national level in a federal state like India or USA and at the international level, thanks to the dynamics of “Globalization,” inter-dependence or mutual dependency is the truth of human existence today. We have to take one another seriously!
To be continued…