All will be lost if we forget to laugh and find positives

THIS situation is a worry, not just containing the virus but caring for those who need our help, trying to pay forward when we can or maintaining ourselves and our society as a whole with dignity.

If we are not careful we will become an over-sanitised, agoraphobic, socially inept society, trying to deal with the depression this pandemic has created and the anxiety that follows, living on devices and in isolation in fear of losing your job and home.

It is really important we stay mentally and physically alert and challenging ourselves every day.

Enough, stop feeding your family spaghetti bolognaise every night, open your fridge, pantry and freezer. Have a good look, get creative and learn to cook from scratch. So many in the past have simply said “I can’t cook!”, well start learning. It’s not hard. Use Google, get the supermarket magazines or troll through the cook books in your kitchen that have probably never been used.

Get out the board games, the deck of cards, or if you can go out have a walk in the fresh air. We live in a beautiful country, keep your distance but take a deep breath and enjoy the simple things.

All this aside, the most important thing is to laugh. Right now the Melbourne Comedy festival has been cancelled and we have a lot of out-of-work comedians who have prepared shows that no one will see unless we demand to be amused.

I really believe all aspects of the media should be showing a duty of care to provide as much humour as possible.

The television is overrun with crime news, rapidly changing press conferences, experts, reports of riots, hoarding or even more depressing, mindless, uninspiring reality shows. Whilst the newspapers report pages of grief or the occasional uplifting quite often small stories.

This decline has been so rapid, less than a month, every day changing but the recovery will be as rapid so we must become more positive and laugh out loud. This I can’t stress enough.

So please, can we call for comedy and at least have some positives that we can look back on once we are through this mess?