On Friday, I saw a headline reminding me that it had been three years since Italy went into lockdown. Quiet streets. Helicopters overhead. Eventually police cars using their megaphones to tell people to stay in side. Going outside only when armed with adult-version hall passes to justify your presence. And yes, the masks, gloves and face shields. Three years of our lives. I know that we’re engineered to seek different ways to mark time, but using a killer virus as a clock is one hell of a method.

It’s too soon to do any kind of retrospective. Not only because COVID is still out there (and always will be, honestly), but also because I still look at this entire space of time with a bit of bewilderment. And even when the time comes to look back at how things were, I really don’t feel that I’ll be keen to do so. My wish instead is that I’ll opt to look ahead at whatever is next, all the while carrying a pocketbook filled with things I’ve learned from days gone by.

But still, I do think about lockdown from time to time. Flashes of what it was like, and then I contrast it with where we are right now.

Like yesterday when I walked through city center and found that most of my journey necessitated that I navigate the hordes of fellow humans outdoors. Tourists and locals alike. A generous serving of Welsh rugby fans in town for the match. Guides wielding unopened umbrellas pointed in the air as they lead long and silent filing around with headphones in their ears. Places like the Pantheon, Piazza di Spagna and Via del Corso are the opposite of peaceful.  This is Rome on normal day when there is no virus swirling about unchecked.

I know that it absolutely shouldn’t be the case, but this massive “re-influx” still takes me off guard. Kind of like the first time I wandered down near the Pantheon once lockdown ended and the borders had opened back up to all traffic. My first thought was, “My God, look at all these people!”. 

You know how you can be walking down an unremarkable carpeted floor…. yet you still somehow manage to trip yourself up? The balls of one foot somehow catches on the fabric. Your sense of momentum, one that had just been uninterrupted moving across the planet… suddenly, as if some invisible object had been encountered, provokes a stutter and your whole body is thrown into disarray. Big and small, these are the life events that are the most jarring. The arrival of a pandemic, a serious traffic accident, the end of a relationship, the sudden resumption of societal rhythms after lockdown; the shifts come in many forms.

I was thinking about life’s quick turn of events again last Friday—even at the end of a hectic workday as I was walking home. There was a rainbow in the sky, which made the intermittent raindrops feel less pesky. I even took a picture, even though I knew it would never be the most beautiful one in my camera roll. I was feeling good. Happy after getting through the week, even while making the usual unconscious effort to ignore the impatient car horns around me. It is true that Rome motorists always have the short end of the stick because we have to negotiate with odd T junctions, intersections met by more than four streets (and no traffic lights), and then the traffic lights installed that are never timed well. 

But as I was walking, I glanced over to a T junction that is emblematic of Rome: one side is crammed with cars that are illegally parked, while another side encourages motorists to ignore the long red traffic light and just drive on through. This time, I noticed that there was something off in the rhythm of this street. Instead of ten cars blocking the box of the quasi-intersection, I noticed a strange clearing. Soon I saw that there were pieces of black and broken plastic strewn across the road. Not one, but two motorcycles were on their sides. And just beyond them, a small white Audi that too was frozen in time, the airbag on the driver’s side fully inflated. One motorcycle pilot was standing up, surveying the scene—the other one was laying on the pavement. As still as the road around him.

I’ll be honest in saying that this is not the first, second or even third time that I have seen a person laying in the road here in Rome. Traffic is dicey here, and motorists tend to push the limit when it comes to obeying traffic laws and the other vehicles around you. People do just about everything except drive up on the tiny sidewalks to get around traffic. And so on this afternoon, the image of the rainbow had vanished, and I was now a part of a nexus of commuting humans now temporarily suspended in time. The accident was too new to detect even the far-off sound of an ambulance. Nobody was quite sure how this particular accident was going to turn out. 

The stoppages and restarts of time are varied and frequent—both in this city and in every other corner of the planet. And indeed for much of the time, when we encounter these exact moments is largely out of our hands. We are lucky if we can find a reasonable way forward and carry on with however life is looking in the aftermath. In the three years on. In the moments after smashed up pieces of motorized vehicles are swept away. In the seconds after rainfall and the fading of a rainbow. 

Given my line or work, and for how long I’ve been wandering around the planet, I know that my brain defaults to a sort of “localize and neutralize the threat” mentality. I know that this is not a great way to be, and intellectually I also understand that thinking this way only sets oneself up for an impossible task. Much like a pandemic, or a traffic situation or even confluence of meteorological events—just about all of this out of my control. I most certainly will not be the single soul capable of eliminating all of the daunting things that come my way. We’re all going to get caught up on moments that leave us cold. Frozen. Hopefully not in a hospital bed or laying in the street for all to gasp at. 

Instead, I try to tell myself that the key to moving about this haphazard world with some sense of sanity is to try and focus not on my anticipation, but instead my individual response to stuff. Even if the circumstances are dire, even if my temperament is in dire need of a positive adjustment. Even if I feel scared or unsure of the future.  With that in mind, I don’t plan on dwelling too much about where my head will be in three years. Instead I’ll focus on how great it is to have so many of us back out in the world, moving around and interacting with one another as if nothing was ever amiss.