(for those standing against corona virus like a rock!) 

Perhaps no one could ever imagine that one day we would wake up and find ourselves isolated in a surreal world far different from our imaginations. In a world, where everyone keeps telling that human being is harmful to our health! Therefore, it is better to keep a social distancing, or at best, not to encounter with anyone at all.  

Now, you might often hear the phrase - "One day, everything will end, but the world will never be the same again". However, if you dig deeper, perhaps no one can be found to explain with confidence, what lies behind this phrase, what it prepares us for, for good or for bad? What will the world not be like? As good as it was, or as bad? Healthy or contaminated, as it used to be? Rich or poor, as always? As selfish, merciless, violent as ever, or generous, tolerant, friendly, loving... Either way, when it all ends, what will world be like?

Today is a time to ask questions, to ask questions to yourself, to others . . . it's a time of unanswered questions. The time when the universe once again turned to the self-satisfied mankind, telling that nothing is in our hands, later making it clear and explaining that everything is in its hands.

Moreover, in the times of maximum isolation and social distancing, becoming more and vaster every day and when the most important thing to run from is the physical contact with humans, it is clear that strong survival mode of the human being immediately switched on and everyone approached the given issue differently:

Humor mode – “Humor will save us!” – You could catch this phrase recently almost everywhere and maybe, it is true. If there is anything coming to defeat us and it is unavoidable, so it be, but let us not lose the face, let us meet this thing with a smile on our face and with dignity. If we have, any chance to get through this tunnel and let us keep the face and celebrate success with a smile.

Panic mode – and you are hearing everywhere that there are endless lines for toilet papers, pasta, sugar, flour and these top products of corona times (I am surprised that there is no blogpost with this headline) are identical through the entire world, just saying that we are looking for macaroni everywhere, and Europeans would say that there is pasta shortage in supermarkets.  

Negligence mode or no fear policy: lots of people are saying “How on earth the people who survived 90s are afraid of corona virus?!” and then you will see how strongly and directly mock at those people, who purchased the bunches of toilet paper, sugar and other products – “What a shame! Leave it for others as well!” or “if my citizens are hungry, why on earth I want to be survived?!” and many others.

They say that the governments of some countries showed neglect towards this issue, I have received bunch of emails from my friends from different corners of the world. They share the following: “I hate my government, they don’t care about anything! They did not do anything until the virus breakout and all was for money! Or (second version) everything happened because of their inactiveness, this country has no government..” and other replicas.  

I was receiving such letters couple of weeks ago, where my Italian friend was complaining that he forcefully stayed at home and that he was deprived of his freedom, though, very soon, we, the entire world will finally conclude that hell with it, today, it is important to survive!  

Philosophical mode – and people started to cope with the most difficult task of finding out the essence that the world provided us by throwing the pandemic called the corona virus, due to which the countries of the world will shut all the borders down or above (as we did) soon and temporarily, they will continue to breath in their bubble. Following the strong declarations on boundless possibilities, how it is possible that it might be an ordinary thing in 21^st century, obviously not, it is a genuinely extraordinary occurrence in need of extraordinary mind to solve it.

Amidst ongoing unique experience, where the world surely is hanging upside down, a human being is getting closer to one truth: books, books and more books!  Maybe not everyone perceive that the centuries old experience of mankind, capable of answering all the current questions can be found in books, they either intentionally or randomly cleaned the dust from the bookshelves, put away those knick-knacks in front of books and reminded about original meaning of the books. And, here we are, now you see new headlines over the internet! “Books to read in quarantine”, “Books to read while in isolation”, “Books about pandemics” and journalists are more eagerly contacting us and asking “What would you advice people to read in the time of corona?” and there, everyone reminds about worlds classics of Márquez – “Love in the time of cholera”, Camus – “Black Plague” and unexpectedly, these books are becoming the most popular, everyone starts the discussions. But there also appear the people, who don’t want to reload their stressed existence with such books and in their Facebook posts they are asking for the books intended for long period, involving and interesting in order to hide from this schizoid world. Suddenly, everyone thinks about “The Eighth Life: (for Brilka)” 1200-page book by Nino Haratischwili. Moreover, some mention Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain", saying that not many people read it and tend to avoid it all the time. Some people advice Harry Potter – book or film series; to this end, point is to run from reality and fly to fantastic world. From Harry Potter fans I remember the words of the Georgian writer Toresa Mosi, “I prefer to read Harry Potter in this hard time as the fact that little Harry can defeat such tremendous evil, such as Voldemort, helps me to think that we can overcome everything”. To put in a nutshell, it is impossible to scroll down Facebook and not to see even a single status update about the books; moreover, Georgian e-book platforms with the support of Georgian publication houses provided the books free of charge until we defeat the virus. Though, when the news was posted on the internet, so many visitors attacked both websites – saba.com.ge or lit.ge – that the system was jammed. Whoever could imagine that?

So, now we might understand why our ancestors were reading so eagerly in previous centuries, when the society was struggling with different viruses all the time, either it was “great soviet union”, more severe than corona, because the key characteristic of this “virus” was ideological pressure directed to the total demoralization of human brains. Even then, some of them could find the experienced way of survival – they protected their mind from the attack of “soviet virus” by reading and maybe they were not able to survive physically, but they did survived mentally (and it’s a great step forward, isn’t it?).   Though, we have to keep in mind that reading is comparable, as once Levan Berdzenishvili wrote in his book, Stalin proved with his life saying “I have read twenty thousand books, but I’m still uneducated man”. Thus, to cut it short, one thing is to read and the other is to perceive what you read.  

Overall, I keep thinking about us, locked on the internet through remote work, online lessons. I also think about partially humorous views of people saying that, if it works now, they will think about remote work even in the future; I feel more and more worried about perceiving the idea, how we threw ourselves in the virtual world in this extremely digitalized era and recently, we have totally lost the opportunity to see each other offline, physically and we have turned into one big e-country.  . . . and still, when all this ends, what will be the world like? I think we cannot find a single person capable of answering this question amidst global panic and bed and worst expectations. I am only thinking about one solution – to wait – and whoever manages to survive this severe pandemic will see with their eyes – how the world would like to be after all this ends.

However, I can surely predict one thing, if this unavoidable and necessary isolation prolongs, I will miss people and when all this ends, in that world, which shall not be same, as we knew it before, I would like a human being to be useful for our health and I also wish to continue my life next to as many real and non-virtual human being, as possible.