Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
Author: Mehmed Mahmutović
It is well over a year since I published the first part of this column, with no idea of when I’d get around to this second part. So, I’ll remind you what I said then: When I stopped going to volleyball training, I realised the brain stretches differently from the body. Much more painfully. Doctors and therapists can’t help you with a brain injury. You have to fix the most important part of your body, after the heart and spirit, yourself.
https://www.media-marketing.com/kolumna/mehmed-mahmutovic-kopirajter-istezanje-mozga-part-one/
A new enemy has sauntered into our lives. Not that anyone around me saw it that way at first, but we’ve got used to it since. We’ve talked about it in schools, at work, in bars, on the playground, and at lunch. We’ve talked about this whore of a virus now preening all around the world and wreaking havoc. And the virus was there already, back then, in various readings, changing our lives in ways we didn’t see or feel, as we often don’t see what’s happening right under our noses.
The COVID-19 virus is spread by microdroplets, dispersed by coughing and sneezing or on contaminated surfaces. It enters through the eyes, nose and mouth and attaches to cells in the respiratory system. It’s life-threatening for everyone, not just the people whose deaths we’re used to hearing about. Scared or not, we must all follow the instructions we’ve been given and avoid putting our lives in real and profound danger.
The World Health Organisation declared a pandemic on March 11. What have we been doing since? We’ve stopped following our dreams, confined ourselves to our homes, and shrunk our spatial imprint. But not our scope of action. We’ve shifted our classes and jobs online and adapted fairly well to the tools we need to organise our jobs, classes, meetings, and coffee drinking online. In a very short time, we’ve managed to create offices, classrooms, and mini-concert halls in a space that is very familiar to us. How long will it all last? Who knows. Are we happy? I am.
Lifestyle updates from influencers aren’t new exotic outings anymore. The ones worth following try to offer concrete help by engaging with experts. The rest are trying to launch new products, earn money, and pursue their lives with barely a thought for the people who made them what they are. Your mother and father, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, friends, professors, trainers, owners of companies, and everyone you know manages their money differently. Including money that should be being sent on. Some people have lost their jobs. Others are losing them now, as I write this text, and even more will do so. Working hours are being cut, as are salaries, and the income gap is huge. People’s lives have been transformed very quickly. The world is changing, both around us and within us.
What is happening in the creative world? It’s becoming more creative and its inhabitants more productive. It’s there and surviving and becoming stronger and more important. It’s providing us with important messages, with music, and online exhibitions, presenting problems for us in various ways and keeping us informed, and doing so much more to help us cope in these difficult times. In short, the creative world hasn’t stopped thinking, creating, and sharing. And do you know why? It is because the creative industry is so much more than you thought it was before the onset of COVID-19. It is the driver of many economies and as such must not be neglected.
Now, more than ever, we need people who think faster and differently. People who view things differently. With stronger sensibilities. Stable people. People whose inner realms have not been occupied by others. Who stretch their brains and whose ideas flow freely across those realms, as they wait for the moment to seize them and drag them up to the surface. So lets leave off the philosophising and digging down into the basements of issues, no matter how well-lit or dark they may be. What we need to do is improve the quality of our communication. This is so important! Learning to communicate better will make communicating easier when we can finally leave our homes again. Isn’t proper communication how we build higher quality relationships? And better and cleaner lives?
What about stretching your brain? This is a great time for renewal. Learn, read, observe, be honest about your feelings, ask honest questions, start changing relationships now, especially with yourselves. Admit to yourselves what’s been bothering you. Clarify where you are, where you want to be, what you want. Tear up a piece of paper you have written all your interests down on and try to find out as much as you can about whatever one is left in your hand. Focus on what interests you most. Learn more. There’s nothing waiting for you outside that is more important than what you can do in your own space. And you can do a lot! Make your life better, more functional. Ten people like that can mean so much for anyone with any sort of connection to them. Students, get reading. Think about doing something new and useful and being able to implement it. Or look for online courses. Attend them. Learn a foreign language. Invest more in yourselves. We can’t just listen to online lectures and expect a job to be waiting for us. Value added is never value lost.
Don’t forget we now have more time for our hearts and spirit.
Don’t forget there are people with no homes. Don’t forget some people live in situations that aren’t as ideal as yours or mine. Look into and try to help such cases.
Follow the official World Health Organisation website (who.int) for updates. Wash your hands regularly (even when Coronavirus doesn’t make us)! Try to be understanding. Offer support in your immediate surroundings first, and then beyond them. Don’t forget the people saving our lives, or the people providing us with content and information. They are trying to bring us together and help us any way they can, by offering us pieces of what they are. Of what they are good at.
The world will definitely be different after this. So far as we can see, it already is. Will it be better? We will have to wait and see.
Until then, we should be better, and we don’t have to wait to start on that. As the dedication in a diary I got at the end of August 2017 reads: “Take this approach to the future: We are responsible for what the future holds.”