While I’m writing this, the sun is shining and it’s cool enough to walk around comfortably. It’s amazing how, in a few days’ or even hours’ time, it could all turn black, windy or, as happened a few weeks ago, a thick mist could envelop the whole island over a grey sea.

In its own twisted way, nature, even when strangely eerie, is beautiful.

Maybe nature’s unexpected turns and its mutability are what makes it so wonderful. A short time ago, we were all scared about COVID and its shattering effects.

A small virus nearly ruined us all, ruined all we had built, turned our dreams into nightmares. But, in its own way, when COVID struck, when we were locked down, cut off, terrified, there was a serenity never seen for some time. There was a quiet in the roads, a carless desert of tarmac unused. The air was cleaner, the visibility clearer, the greenery crisper.

We even sat alone or in the company of a few and feared the worst but planned a better future post-COVID. We had time to think, reflect, devise new ways for ourselves, for our way of life, our world.

There was a realisation that the speed at which the world was going was totally wrong; the incessant building of new roads, new apartments, new gateways to a glitzier time, was not normal and had gone out of control. Most of us at that time realised we needed a total rethink if ever we did escape the virus onslaught.

When the virus, this minuscule microbe that devastated the whole globe’s normality, struck, we thought we had lost it all. All our life’s work was put into question. Travel, partying, even hugs, handshakes and cheek-kissing were out.

Before the brutish virus spread around the world, we thought we had it all. We thought we had never had it so good, that we could never change our style.

When COVID came along and wrought its mayhem with the deaths, the suffering and the fear of contagion, we were exiled – or most of us were – inside our homes. There we fumed at our sorry state. We longed for the days when all was legitimate, all was possible, when the world throbbed at a frenetic pace.

We recalibrated, we assessed what we had before COVID and what we had at that moment in time; and we thought hard about new ways we should look at life, work/life balance and the future of the country and of the globe. If, indeed,  there would be a future; because we did also contemplate that the old world, the old ways, were dead.

While dreaming and hoping to get out of our hermit-style living, we pledged, or many of us did, that never again would we let go of this new soul-searching. We even envisaged a new way, a new wave of treating life, entertainment, travel and tourism. It seemed that we were finally convinced that, once COVID was over, there would follow a dream-like era where quality would always defeat quantity.

Now we are thankfully over, or practically over, any worry about COVID. Even if it is still around, it is, seemingly, not as deadly or fearsome.

We now travel far and wide. We eat out, cars hog streets yet again. We hug, shake hands. Everyone has put aside their anxiety and is back to kissing all cheeks, high-fiving and doing all things COVID taught us to dread.

I thought and hoped we would change because COVID had made us, in its insanity, saner. But have we changed at all?- Victor Calleja

And, yet, after such a time of horror, we have learnt nothing. We have not changed our old ways.

The world, and Malta, is back to a pre-COVID wave of unplanned, unthought-out races to do more, to build more, to open up more places and house more tourists than ever before.

It’s back to a time where quantity rules, where the idea of achieving more at all cost is the mantra of the day. We want more numbers; we look at nothing but growth; we incentivise all the ways to see more cash registers filled to the brim.

Instead of taking a step, or a few steps, back, to go back to a new world, where we could re-evaluate all we had, we jumped in at excessive speed and dived headlong into the old life of more is beautiful, excess is glorious, growth is god.

We forgot our promises when we were desperate. That we would reconsider all we do and try doing it better. We forgot that the virus – that detested little virus which nearly felled us – was a good wake-up call.

A wake-up call which should have made us appreciate that our lifestyle and our goals should be tied to something more important than just our wallets, pockets, bank accounts and constant growth at all costs.

The important pieces in our puzzle should be the future of our children, grandchildren and people still to come. It should be all about the future of the whole planet. Relentless growth is harming, most probably killing, the planet.

Instead of seeing what we could do to revisit our past, to reduce wastage, to reduce pollution, decrease meat consumption, increase green areas, reduce car use, we transitioned happily to our old ways. The old ways of who cares about tomorrow or the day after, let’s celebrate and waste on relentlessly today.

I thought and hoped we would – all of us, including me as a consumer and citizen – change because COVID had made us, in its insanity, saner. But have we changed at all?

Have we tried fixing what was broken before COVID to make our life as citizens, as travellers in this world of ours, more commensurate with what the island and the planet need?