THIS new virus is teaching us to see limits in new ways.
If you’ve lived in Cebu for a long time, you’ve probably never thought about the borders between its cities and towns.
To me, they’ve always been nothing more than imaginary lines.
Before welcome arches or billboards were added to the landscape, you knew you had crossed into another town when you drove past the town plaza or the Roman Catholic Church that usually sprawled across the road from the town hall.
Starting today, we’re all going to feel just how real those borders are.
At noon last Saturday, Cebu City closed its borders to most members of the public. Non-residents can enter only if they are health care workers or emergency responders, or if they work in businesses that are allowed to continue operating during the enhanced community quarantine period.
These businesses include banks, supermarkets, public markets, pharmacies, food outlets, public utilities, business process outsourcing and export companies.
Today, anyone who wishes to leave Cebu City for their hometowns within Cebu Province will get their last chance to do so. As soon as Monday starts—exactly 12:01 a.m. Monday—Cebu Province will close its borders to Cebu City as well.
This has never happened before in the lives of most Cebuanos and residents of Cebu. I am tempted to ask a former teacher how different this feels compared with his boyhood years during World War 2, but I’m afraid the question might not land too well.
Now, I know these measures are necessary. I also know we can choose to adapt, the way we’ve had to quickly learn to do without some of the everyday miracles we used to take for granted. I am haunted, these days, by the smell of my nearly two-year-old niece’s hair. Or at least my memory of it.
When this is all over, I think, I will no longer let a text message or someone’s Facebook post distract me from what this beautiful little girl is trying to tell me in this all-too-fleeting moment.
When will this be over, though?
That’s a question no one has any real answers for. These days, the line between what we know and what we don’t is a boundary that seems to keep closing in.
Something that Nathan Furr wrote yesterday helps a lot. When we find ourselves struggling with uncertainty, Furr recommends five ways of thinking.
One is to think about what all these challenges and uncertainties are teaching us.
Another is to frame the challenge as a game, and to remember that while we may fail or lose in some games, that doesn’t keep us from winning in others.
Yet another is to remind ourselves that obstacles, no matter how difficult, create opportunities to do something heroic.
It also helps, Furr advises, to remember just how random so many parts of life can be.
Another useful approach for dealing with what we’re all going through is to remind ourselves of everything we still have. Gratitude works.
I like to tease friends that spending all these long stretches of time cooped up indoors will help them see how much they really like their families’ company.
But the truth is, I have never been more grateful for who I have in my life. Or more determined to protect them and our future together, even if the very notion of a future seems difficult to imagine these days.