From chaos to order

omos o país do metafísico e do imaterial: from the exaltations of a saudade, which never seems to leave us, to the journey through the nostalgic sadness of the fados, we sing of a country that seems to claim to be immune to greater feelings, that sits and waits for something.

In the twenty years I have lived in Portugal I feel that the days are becoming shorter and the memory too short to remember the last day without a crisis. Bigger or smaller, the crises seem to be the blanket of Lusitanian lethargy, reactive by necessity and forgotten of the past by consciential imperative.

Every time we found ourselves in distress, we put the will and the strength to recover into making sense of the numbers. There was no consensus on the form, but the objectives were common: to reduce the deficit and cool the growth of the debt. If the prescription was followed, the years to come would be years of greater prosperity. Poverty would be alleviated and the ultimate goal of the policy would be met: people's lives would be improved.

The crisis did not arrive first in numbers, but has since spread to people, triggering dread of the disease. Society as we know it has stopped and is shut up at home. It waits with impatient patience for something: for an increase in the number of cases, for the triggering of the virus in families, for the slowing down...

There is a crisis that is a calamity and an emergency, unlike any other. This time, we are reacting again, but lives are not saved by the numbers, but with the numbers.

We know that something has already changed and much has yet to change. Covid-19 has dragged us home, stopped businesses and is strangling services that are still open because the population asks and needs it.

The European Central Bank, the European Commission and the national governments are making a huge effort, providing support, credits and raising awareness. Calm, courage and hope are being sought in the triumph of global society over the first truly global threat that we are facing. All of us with the same certainty: the greatest damage will always be caused to the victims of this epidemic outbreak.

Complicated months are ahead and the future is still uncertain. The solidarity of companies and civil society is unfolding in initiatives, movements, projects, activities... one can feel the pulsing of human warmth through gestures that are reproduced and multiplied: a hope in humanity is being restored and we are moving forward together.

In a few years' time it will be better evaluated how much we have changed during these long weeks in confinement, or if we have changed at all. And we will write down what kind of society has emerged from adversity: whether we have kept the same habits, whether we have become more devoted to affection and to others, valuing closeness, contact, hugs and kisses, which we are now prevented from giving. If, on the contrary, we will give ourselves to the immediate, to a carpe diem of feelings, aspirations and actions.

While people wait at home, there is a country that acts and reacts as it can. There is an interruption of apathy and the nostalgia for our life a few months ago grows. The fado has fallen silent and there is an eerie silence in the streets. Hope is heard at the door of the houses.

Adapting Saramago, I venture to say that out of chaos an order will be deciphered.

Lucas Sousa is an Economics student at Nova School of Business & Economics and is part of the Nova Debate - Debate Society of the New University of Lisbon.