Playing hide and seek with a toddler may be sometimes quite cute entertainment.
A kid would simply cover its face with palms and joyfully announces ‘well, go ahead and find me if you can’ without even ever exiting your eyeshot. And a kid would be fairly sure that as long as he/she won’t see you as long you won’t find a kid.
Laughing you would pretend for a while that you’re truly unable to detect a kid.
But what if a grown-up would want to play the same game with you? Or even, let’s say, a bunch of grown-ups?
That doesn’t make much sense then, does it?
When COVID-19 struck the unprepared world, firstly we all felt somehow confused.
We didn’t quite know where this virus came from, what dangers it contains, how it will influence our lives, and what do we do to be safe.
Daily from media we had tons of information pouring on our head. It was not easy to decide whether sources are reliable. We wondered, where’s the line between officially confirmed suggestions and rumors?
Nota bene: all that information was strictly negative and shockingly horrifying, which didn’t put us at ease but made us insecure.
Events were changing rapidly.
Suddenly a lockdown fell upon our heads, a lot of us lost jobs (temporarily? we yet to find out), some get sick and even some died.
In the beginning, we thought that quarantine will last some days only or a week at most.
And right there, approximately at that time, was the moment when arrived those who with such a high level of self-belief said that there’s no virus and all that’s just another government’s lie and those who do believe in COVID-19 are fools.
So what they did?
1. They manipulated with statistics to show that even if a virus does exist it’s not that dangerous. They said (totally missing the point of contagiousness) that more people are dying from cancer, therefore quarantine is unnecessary.
2. They applied to those who were financially troubled by the lockdown, saying that they are victims of wicked government’s games that just in a greedy attempt make themself richer, in reality, made us all poorer.
What dangers did they create for all of us?
1. We stop being careful. We now keen to disregard social distances and other small protection deeds that we were doing so thoughtfully.
2. We stop trusting officials. There should always be a sane line that differentiates not fully accepting decisions made by politics and totally considering a lie everything officials say (especially when matter touches our health).
3. We won’t react in future (possibly even worse) scenarios. Let’s not wrongly assume that if this pandemic couldn’t kill us no future pandemic can.
So, who are they?
They are the people that can’t get along with the possibility of the sudden arrival of anything new and particularly destructive.
They are more likely to believe in someone’s bad trick, a joke, a malice intention, than in their own limitedness and feebleness as a human being and social cell.
They‘re just like children, that scared by thunder in a night, slip under the blanket where they feel safer.
They do look like scared kids hiding their fears and inability to accept new conditions behind the moth-eaten mask like a child hides its face behind palms.
How do I cope with them?
Nothing is so good in finding a clear path and getting away from infantile fears as gentle guidelines and assurance that even though life is quite frightful and unstable it doesn’t mean that hiding from it could be a solution.
Especially when we talk about hiding behind our child-like palms, built up with facts that were unreasonably denied by us.
Coping with this type of person isn’t easy, but you need to be calm and patient to them, as you are calm and patient towards a tempered child.
You may also like our articles about crisis lessons that you may learn in those hard times and how do we stay afloat during the crises.