There were times over the past few months when I wondered who would drown out Brexit as the loudest voice in the room. Well, now I know.
I first became aware of the "C" word on Sunday, January 26th. I was at Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG) in northern Paris at 6 am to pick up someone flying in from overseas. In the preceding days, I'd heard murmurings in the news that a virus in China was spreading and had the potential to make its way overseas. Arriving at Terminal 2 that morning with sleep still in my eyes, my foggy brain woke up pretty quickly at the sight of TV crews rushing to interview anyone getting off a flight from China and/or with a mask covering their mouth. The warning signs related to personal hygiene placed throughout the terminal told me that another visitor—sans passeport—had potentially arrived in the land of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.
And now here we are, nine weeks later, thousands are dead, countless unemployed, sporting events and concerts cancelled, countries with borders closed, and the people of France living on lock down. Over these nine weeks, COVID-19 has dominated our phones, our news feeds, and our conversations. Our minds have been filled with disbelief and oftentimes, worry. Everyone is taking a different stance over it—some feeling the restrictions have been too harsh, others thinking it's not enough. Yet, we have watched on the news and heard from friends all over the world that this is not just affecting some of us, but all of us.
It has been a bizarre experience for us living in the greater Paris region to see the reactions of people. When our president, Emmanuel Macron, made an announcement on Thursday night last week that French citizens had to be careful and limit the amount of time spent outside, everyone thought, mais oui, bien sûr! However, the following Sunday just so happened to be gloriously sunny and as Val and I drove into Paris to have house church and dinner with some friends, we saw throngs of people walking, running, and biking along the river Seine. Now, I have been in France for almost thirteen years and am fluent in the language, and I could have sworn I did not hear Mr. Macron saying, in perfectly articulated and authoritative French, "You must all take this opportunity to go outside and walk aimlessly through the city whilst singing Je Ne Regrette Rien by Édith Piaf and customarily kissing each other on the cheek as the waft of Chanel N°5 fills the air." No, I am pretty sure our Commander in Chief said, "Be sensible, protect the older people, stay inside."
Well, turns out Emmanuel wasn't too happy about all of Paris having a marche à pied last Sunday so he sat the nation down in front of the TV again this past Monday and gave us all a slap on the wrist. The result of our collective faux pas? Confinement. We can only go outside for necessary reasons and these reasons have to be accompanied by our papers. Tom Hanks has COVID-19 and I cannot go outside to get a breath of fresh air without my papers. Seriously, I feel like I'm living in a World War II movie!
And voilà, everything is closed and we are on lock down, but life goes on. I will be updating this blog regularly on the day to day happenings during this unprecedented time in the hope it'll bring you some insight. My humour is in no way intended to minimise the legitimate loss so many have felt recently. I pray daily that this virus will soon be a story told in the past tense. In recent days, I have taken comfort in the words of C.S Lewis. Over 70 years ago, Lewis urged his readers to be calm regarding their fears over an atomic bomb and while we do not face something as grave as the threat of an atomic bomb, his words do seem appropriate today concerning COVID-19.
In one way, we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
C.S. Lewis—Present Concerns, Journalistic Essays.