Confinement -Mari Carmen Díez Navarro

The Confinement managed to stop us, and start thinking, to feel, to imagine, to value, to thank, to feel human.

Confinement has made us think about our way of life: rush, stress, superficiality, intolerance of frustration, submission to screens, competitiveness, endless occupations, excessive dependencies.

It has made us think about our bodies, the care it needs, its limitations, our tendency to look more for its aesthetics than for its health.

It has made us think about older people. Did we know the thousands and thousands of elderlies who live in nursing homes? Do we know how they live? Do we know why they are there?

It has made us think about children, about the uncertain future that we leave to them, their schools, their teachers, their games, their studies, their walks, their friendships, their fears.

It has made us think not only about important professions such as those in the health and school world, but also about the many other jobs that are discredited in this society and that are now revealed to us as very important: cleaning, transportation, agriculture, helping the dependents …

It has made us think of fragility, of powerlessness in the face of misfortune, illness and death, but also in the face of globalization, macro-politics, the media, power, money, inequalities.

It has made us think about our relationship with nature, with life, with climate change, with the planet.

Confinement has made us feel saddened by the losses suffered and concern for the people we love.

It has made us fearful of suffering the illness, pain, old age, death, abandonment, absence. And it has forced us to accept these realities, which we often silence or deny avoiding suffering.

It has made us feel astonished at this new situation that overwhelms us, makes us despair, leaves us defenseless.

It has made us long for our jobs, our streets, our customs, our meals, our entertainment, our daily tenderness. It has made us feel impatient and nervous in the face of this unintended passivity, in the face of this frustration that we do not want and that we did not have, and even in the face of difficulties in accepting our own alteration.

It has made us insecure about the future, in the face of emptiness, in the face of diffidence, labor and economic problems.

Confinement has made us imagine and desire a way of life that is more consistent with our needs and our nature.

It has made us imagine and wish for a more coherent, balanced, and diverse use of time.

It has made us imagine and desire policies that respond to collective interests and that walk towards the common good.

It has set us to imagine and desire a modern, well-endowed health system with the capacity to care, investigate, cure, and prevent disease.

 It has made us imagine and desire an educational system that is sensitive, close, efficient, rich, joyful, and that is more attentive to children, their evolution and their needs, than to rush, grades or compulsive evaluations.

Confinement has left us alone with ourselves, with our thoughts, feelings, desires, habits, longings, and hobbies.

It has put us to be with the family, sharing time and spaces, nights and days, geniuses, and boredom.

He has made us inhabit our houses with its order or disorder, its care or carelessness, its times, or its fates.

It has put us to be virtually connected with our relatives, friends, co-workers, neighbors, students, families of our students …

It has made us look after and look at our bodies more than ever, to watch over them, to provide them with movement, food, cleaning, attention …

It has made us realize that we do not know how to live with calm, with time, with stress.

It has put us to creatively discover what it is we really like or dislike doing.

It has made us complain, to verbalize what we feel, to recognize what we lack of control, patience, tolerance and what we have left over of narcissism, insensitivity, and endurance.

It has made us face how to make a synthesis between our critical capacity and the responsibility to pay attention to the authority without fleeing from a law that what it tries is to order, support and cover the collective.

Confinement has made us stand up to adversity, to draw strength, to desire changes, to push forward.

Confinement has reconciled us to what is important. And it has put us to value and thank life, health, joy, communication, friendship, sanity, creativity, love…

Mari Carmen Díez Navarro, Early Childhood Education Teacher, psychopedagogue, pedagogical coordinator of the Aire Libre Children’s School, Alicante (Spain). He has been a member of the Editorial Board of the magazine In-fàn-ci-a for twenty years (Associació de Mestres Rosa Sensat), and a member of ASMI (Association for Children’s Mental Health). He regularly participates in teacher training activities and contributes to various pedagogical publications. She is the author of poetry and pedagogy books, in which she narrates and analyzes her experiences at school. Some of her books are: The green ear of the school, A not entirely pedagogical class diary, The downstairs of the school, My school tastes like orange, The teacher’s earrings, 10 Key ideas. Early childhood education and Art in nursery school. Contributions on creation and freedom. In their works they appear as conductive threads: listening to children, the teacher-student bond, the inclusion of the emotional world in school, the valuation of the group, relationships, experimentation, creativity