Thread by @grescoe

20 years ago, I was an inveterate traveller, happy to have all my possessions in storage, ready to go anywhere in the world with very little notice.
When 9/11 happened, + planes around the world were grounded, my 1st reaction was selfish: I mourned the fact...

...that I seemed to be about to lose access to the world, and my freedom to travel might be curtailed.
Now in my 50s, with a family, I'm re-experiencing that sense of loss, as #covid19 grounds planes and closes borders.

This weekend, I saw somebody in a park with a cloth bag from a #Dublin bookstore named The Winding Stair, and felt a pang of loss: this shop, unknown to me, was, by the force of things, likely to remain so, for weeks, months, maybe forever...

My ability to imagine myself elsewhere—to imagine I could be browsing the shelves of a delightful bookstore, should I want to, in a day or two, simply by boarding a plane—had once again been stymied. The world, once fantastically available, was once suddenly beyond my reach

Even 20 yrs ago, I knew this was a fantastic luxury—by accident of birth (male, white, Canadian passport), I had a freedom of movement and access unavailable to most people in the world.

Though I tried to bring a questioning attitude to my travels, I also profited from the privilege that allowed me to roam free, mostly unquestioned, to some of the world's farthest shores.

All this to say: 9/11 didn't end travel. Some travel trails temporarily shut down, but soon enough, ships sailed, the planes took off again. As of today, #Covid19 has shut down world travel. Entire nations and continents are off limits. These lockdowns will end...

...though it might take longer than weeks or months they're saying now. I remember the world, the world I traveled, before 9/11, and it was a different place: opener, a little more full of wonder, a lot less imbued with fear. (The going, as they say, was good then.)

Make no mistake: the ships will sail again, the planes will fly. But just as everything changed after 9/11, the world after #covid19 will be a different place.

As someone who spent decades indulging his itchy feet, often to the detriment of connecting with community...

...I can see that it would be better if there weren't quite so many planes taking off, so many ships (especially cruise ships!) setting sail. The enforced caesura of isolation, quarantine, and lockdown is already changing the world.

For the first time in living memory, the canals of #Venice are clear, as are the skies over northern Italy. Traffic deaths have plummeted in China. And in the weeks to come, people will do extraordinary things: they will care for and save the lives of neglected elders...

...recall and reinforce networks of support outside of commerce, & work together to find a vaccine. (We'll also discover the places where cynical ideologues have dismantled the whole notion of society—for they are likely to suffer the most.)

Two decades after 9/11, I'm a more rooted, happier person. I miss the highs of my travelling life, though I revisit them in memory (and, very rarely, on family trips).
I learned something by living through 9/11. I expect to learn even more by living through #covid19

And as much as I'm already mourning the loss of the wisdom and grace of so many elders, and as much as I fear the way things could slide sideways in the most polarized, dismantled polities, I also see the potential for great things to come...

...for on the other side of this, we might learn a lesson. The lethal communicability of this border-and-ocean-hopping virus is also a reminder of how connected we all are, and how our species's knack for sociability & cooperation, if not stymied by xenophobes & demagogues...

...allows us to come together to surmount even the gravest global crises.

That said, if there's a spare copy of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman kicking around the Winding Stair, please set it aside; I'd be happy to pay in advance. I have a feeling I'll be by to pick it up...one day.