How long shall we continue living without a hug? I know, the pandemic is here and if one thing is for sure, it is that we really don’t have a clue how long it will stay. So, for the moment, we need to live with it. And in fact we can, we adapt. There are of course a lot of challenges, and millions of people are facing financial and health uncertainty. Do I have “the” solution? No, I don’t. I can only say that whatever the difficulties are, however huge the challenge seems to be, we need to continue to care for life, and not forget that being alive also means psychological, mental and spiritual health.
And those aspects of life are not directly affected by the virus- they depend on us. We decide if and how deep we let the actual circumstances affect those essential aspects of our humanity. We are in control here, not the Covid!

We may be ill, have strange symptoms after being apparently cured, lose our economic power, and for many, the result can be dramatic. But as it always occurs in life, the choice of how to react in the face of those challenges is always ours.

A philosopher wrote that “There is nothing impossible, only people with limitations”. It took me many years and experiences in life to fully understand and accept this, but today I agree. I also consider that we, human beings, are all limited. But a limitation is not only meant to be contemplated, it is here to signal to us the possibility of expansion: by breaking through the limitation, we expand our consciousness and we influence the situations we come across in life.

How does it relate to the actual challenge that we are facing? to eradicate the virus does not depend on us, but we can choose how to react when it strikes us. Maintaining our economic welfare does not depend on us, but choosing whether to fall into depression or rather stand and be creative, does depends on us. Easy? No, not at all. Sometimes it seems impossible, but even then, it is a limitation and thus it can be overcome.

So what about the hug? We miss hugging friends and family, today, but with the memory of the past and our imagination focused toward the future, the present becomes just a fleeting moment between past and future, instead of limiting us and becoming our whole world.