The devil’s workshop?

“Several studies have shown that a walk in nature or listening to music can trigger the mind-wandering mode. This acts as a neural reset button, and provides much needed perspective on what you’re doing. Daydreaming leads to creativity.” - Daniel J. Levitin, The New York Times

It’s your choice: be active or be idle. Easter is the time for choice and change.

There are two ways we can handle idleness and isolation, fittingly enough, as we’ve been kept from our regular routines long before Holy Week. We are forced back into our homes, into our minds. The limited space left many Filipinos grappling for things to do, particularly sports fans used to a regular diet of superhuman achievement, now finding there is none to consume.  What to do, what to do.

Many athletes maintain their conditioning, share their training and diet, even chat with fans. But they’re really just in a holding pattern. For the most part, athletes and spectators have been digging into the past, reviewing their favorite games even from eons ago, posting old photographs, digging through memorabilia. Eventually, these memory banks that we sift through will run out, plainly due to lack of new deposits. Even the most exciting highlights - like an old joke - have diminishing impact after a while. Adrenaline junkies will always need a new hit. There’s no escaping it. We need the fix.

So we stray (or escape) into the realm of imagination. We ask “what if” and create mythical scenarios that never happened, in a desperate bid for stimulation. What if this player had not been injured? What if this player was in a different era (where young people assume legends of the past could not thrive today)? They create fantasy match-ups, like video games where you make up teams using entire leagues, or create your own players with implausible skill sets. We step out of the realm of the real deeper and deeper into the unlikely.

Now here’s the bad news.

Given the way things are developing – particularly in the Philippines – it is probable that it will take roughly six months to return to normal, or what may resemble it. The national government is reallocating resources to get ahead of the pandemic, and that alone may take weeks. The distribution of relief goods and financial aid will reach into May, given the size and spread of the archipelago. Divvying up the needs of over 115 million people (plus any OFWs who are repatriated) will, by nature, take time, too. True, the government had savings and can realign budgets that won’t be touched due to quarantine. But it can also not take the chance of restarting the spread of COVID-19.

Worse, sports will most likely be the last priority, if we are to take the cue from the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee, who pushed the Games back for one year. It takes time to test people, develop medical protocols (and test those) and create programs to flatten the curve in the hope that it doesn’t overburden the health care systems of the countries struggling to contain the infection. Also, it takes time to see the number if infected and reinfected go down. People still need to believe how bad it is in many places, and respond accordingly.

The cold, hard fact is that sports require a live audience. The NBA and amateur sports leagues tried going on without crowds, and it just doesn’t work. Who would risk that right now? If even churches have resorted to broadcasting from isolation to protect their faithful, the sports – a far second though sometimes called a religion – certainly can do nothing but follow. It just takes one asymptomatic carrier to start the chain reaction all over again. So for the near future, sports will be on hold. There’s no other way.

This is what will happen. Gradually, more and more businesses will be allowed to open in limited capacity, with shorter operating hours. Little by little, public transportation will be restored. That alone could take up to two months. But if right now, some quarters insist on breaking quarantine out of artificial confidence, then that, too, could be delayed. We have to dip our toes back into normalcy. How soon that happens is up to us and our neighbors.

We have to accept that there will be no major sports activities until about October, and that depends on how we behave as a people. Authorities can only protect us from ourselves to the extent that we cooperate. If we act like moths irresistibly drawn to the flame of what we think is freedom of movement, it will take longer. But if we save each other from ourselves, if we show discipline and patience and maturity, we may get a chance to return to the old normal sooner. Do you really need to step out today? If you know the answer is no, then stay home. You may just end up breathing the free air of infection. Then we’d all have to spend more time on our own. And there’d be nobody else to blame.

Stay still and have faith. Don’t be the devil’s workshop.