Marco Iazzolino

Not a day goes by that the TV, relatives, neighbors, police with megaphones in the street do not remind us of the rules to be observed to prevent the virus. Videos, appeals, photos, newspapers creatively tell us of the rules for prevention.

Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize winner in economics, often recalled that excessive information devours people’s attention by creating, at best, human beings that reproduce the behaviour. The sense of the new behavior is certainly not in the reproduction, but in the function (the desire) it wants to achieve (the prevention from the virus). Repeated behavior without (deep) awareness, risks being fertile ground for fear, anxiety, and above all fails to transform respectful behavior (of today) into a change in the future. Fear, anxiety, disorientation are very much linked to the desperate search for the glove, the mask, a quest that leaves no room to understand what you are experiencing, thus favoring a belly response (however blessed). The rules are precious allies in the growth of humans as well as in the prevention of coronavirus, only if they “transgress” (i.e., they can make us go on-grow). The solution then is not to have rules even for Covid 19? Not at all! Jesus, in today’s gospel, tells us that “I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill fully”. Completion in Greek is written telos (purpose or end), and it is a precious term because it helps us understand that doing takes on its profound meaning in being. Courage!