“When I grow up, I want to write a feel-good newsletter”. I made that promise to myself and to my sisters years ago, in the midst of Lebanon’s civil war. I felt it would be our revenge over the daily scenes of horror that were robbing us of our carefree childhood.
The global upheaval caused by today’s Covid-19 lockdown has stirred up some of my war memories. (Granted -- the absence of the violence and hatred associated with a human conflict is a major difference.) Back is the urge to write my ‘Feelgood Newsletter’ and escape the current apocalyptic mood. As luck would have it, as I start drafting my newsletter, it occurs to me that it was on this day, April 13, that the war in Lebanon broke out in 1975.
I know, I know, there is nothing apocalyptic about being locked down in sunny Barbados with coconut trees facing my balcony. What I want my stories to do is to help you briefly escape lockdown and discover the Caribbean way of life with its values and traditions. I’m hoping you might even relate to some of my misgivings around our approach to life, our beliefs, our identity, or, more appropriately, our identities.
Though seemingly trivial, the personal anecdotes you’ll read in “A Feel-good Newsletter” will bring out the humanity I’ve experienced again and again in Barbados, ever since I started splitting my time between Geneva, which has become my hometown as an adult, and the sweetness of this Caribbean island. Not a day goes by over here without learning something from totally foreign cultures; indeed, I find myself questioning many of the beliefs I had embraced as a given, and even redefining myself.
In short, this Newsletter will be very much in keeping with my ‘Ocean Inspiration’ project:
A celebration of diversity,
A journey towards self-awareness,
An encounter with ‘the Other’ to enhance self-discovery,
An incentive to live differently while not casting off for good.
Is it possible that our minds were seriously experiencing lockdown long before coronavirus physically hit us with it?
Translated by Edna Setton
April 13, 2020