Carmen Lăiu

Almost a century ago, writer Virginia Woolf noticed people’s tendency to approach books “with clouded and divided minds, asking fiction to be true, poetry to be false, biographies to be flattering and history to chime with prejudices.”

The fact that we are able to anticipate most of the consequences of our actions is undoubtedly a blessing. However, we can also allow fear or over-cautiousness to make us anticipate events that are not likely to follow. This edges us toward a common error of judgement: the slippery slope.

Even if half of us refer to creativity as a rare trait that only the other half has, in reality, creativity is much like a muscle: the more we use it, the more creative we become.

There have now been over 12 million cases of COVID-19 infection globally, and half a million deaths. Researchers are constantly looking for new and better information to reduce the uncertainty around the virus.

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry – Winston Churchill

The greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer. – F. B. Meyer

Let him that would move the world first move himself. – Socrates

What if we weren't allowed to use more than 140 words a day? If we entered this game, among the useless words we would give up there would probably be words that convey encouragement too. The sad irony is that we use too few words of encouragement anyway, although the emotional and relational benefits are too important to neglect.

What would it be like to eat 8,6 kilograms of food in a single meal? Although it seems absurd to try and fit so much food into one’s stomach, a 23-year old model from London conducted just such an experiment in 1981.

Joaquín Carmona had 16,000 followers on Twitter, and his posts about Spanish athletics were appreciated even by sport professionals. None of his followers had ever met him in person, and when silence fell on his account for three months, people began to look for him, write to him and ask who Carmona really was.

Let’s not go back to the abnormality of before! This is one of the messages which the French hung from their balconies on May 1, when the activities that would usually happen on this national public holiday could not take place. What can we change and what is worth changing after COVID-19?

Discussions about the reasonable number of deaths in a pandemic, about whether or not the price for saving people is killing the economy and, ultimately, debates on a life’s value were brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our planet may be fittingly compared to the 1994 film, Speed: A bomb is planted on a bus and rigged to explode when the bus slows to less than 80 kilometres per hour. The bus barrels through Los Angeles, hitting obstacles and endangering the lives of passengers and pedestrians until a solution is found.

Many certainties and convictions will be swept away. Many things that we thought were impossible are happening. The day after we have won, it will not be a return to the day before; we will be stronger morally.