La Voz de Galicia – March 5, 2021 →
How can life change in a year! I remember perfectly well what I was doing on such a day as today a year ago because it was my last public event in New York City. And I also remember how normal was the trip to Galicia I took two days later because I was going to have a week-long break and then go back to teaching at the university and to a season of spring concerts. But suddenly, life changed. What was supposed to be a week turned into a months-long stay; classes came to be taught online, and concerts were postponed until they ended up being cancelled. And curiously, that process of personal and professional change in which I had been immersed for some time accelerated in such a way that made me question absolutely all the things that surrounded me.
Now, a year later since the start of this other life, perhaps we may be a little more aware that what we had a year ago will not return. Life is already different. The ecosystem of our small and great cities has already changed. And even though there is much ahead of us, the impression that we are already at the end of this pandemic brings with it a complex feeling, at least for me: being able or knowing how to adapt oneself to the following chapter in our lives depends on the moment in our lives in which we find ourselves.
Getting used to the uncertainty is complicated for everyone. And it is probably much more complicated for those that this year lost some of the pillars (emotional or economic) that supported their lives. But if we learned something around this pandemic, is that the resilience of human beings, capable of adapting and accepting a reality as cruel as it is changing, continues to be the great hope of our existence.
