Will humanity be the same after this pandemic? Is it possible that living in so much suffering will make us fall into the same error? What can we learn from all this? What will the future of the economy, work and the relationships between people be like?

In these days, weeks and months, macro questions like these have arisen, including the most existential ones: what am I doing locked up here? What is the meaning of life? Is it possible to be happy during the pandemic? What do I do with so much pain in the face of my helplessness, illness and death of friends, even when I cannot go to a funeral? To the most operative and dramatic questions which in Venezuela precede the pandemic: how can I eat if my salary is not enough or if I depend on my sales for the day? Where do I get medicines if I get sick or in which hospital could I be treated? Do I die from the pandemic or from starvation?

If there is something that has been identified during the pandemic it is that human beings have been united by uncertainty and fear in the face of this overwhelming and dramatic reality. However, we are also united by our nature which consists in the demand for meaning and is expressed in questions. Now the true breaking point is the type of hypotheses regarding these questions and the path that we can humanly follow in order to initiate the answers.

It has also become clear that every job is necessary and important. From health personnel who are on the front line of the emergency, to those who have stayed at home and have had to adapt to a new dynamic and experienced a new way of working.

The real challenge we have to face is understanding that if everything changes we also have to change our way of working, teaching, learning, caring for the planet and above all caring for each other. This is a task that we cannot postpone until this is over but rather have to start right now. If we wait for it to happen nothing will really change.

Likewise, this social distancing which we are called to live cannot be an excuse to distance ourselves from the needs of the other, especially the most vulnerable. On the contrary, it is a great occasion for a closer proximity to people’s needs.

As the French sociologist Alain Touraine says, a “responsible imagination” is necessary on the part of nations, states, civil society, and then each of us, to face these new challenges. We are in this together and the way out is united. Otherwise the future for the planet and humanity is at stake.

“Everything changes” as Julio Numhauser’ song popularized by Mercedes Sosa says. These days some friends of mine made the most beautiful version I have seen and heard and it ends by saying: “But my love does not change / No matter how far I am / Neither memory nor pain / Of my town and my people / What yesterday changed / Will have to change tomorrow / Just as I change / In this distant land”.