Long distance love. It's possible? Poetry, music and literature have been asking for this for generations. But never as today do our daily lives depend on the answer to this question. In fact, how many people are loving each other from a distance at the time of coronavirus? Every day I read stories of someone who fell in love without ever having met the other person but having interacted only through social media. Locked in our homes we dream of love and once the door is opened someone ends up entering. Whether it's the girl you casually chat with on facebook or the guy you cross over on tinder, the heart doesn't stop beating by decree. On the contrary.
"It is in the separation that one feels and understands the strength with which one loves", wrote Fyodor Dostoevskij. Yet to many it seems something unheard of and unthinkable. But it should be remembered that this has been happening since the internet has existed. In the beginning there was ICQ, then myspace, then facebook, instagram and all the others social. Containers of stories that are born first in the head than in the flesh. And what about meetic, tinder, badoo, lovoo and all the endless string of virtual moments of love encounter? If all this yesterday was aimed at an ever-growing but limited audience, today the quarantine has made this type of approach the norm.
It is not a novelty
And there is nothing strange about it. If we think that the first marriage announcement of the modern era dates back to 1685 in a British agricultural newspaper, it is not clear why the internet should not be exploited as well. And I remember that "There is mail for you", one of the first films that talk about love in chat, dates back to 1998. We had time to break in the tools. If there was no love at a distance Pablo Neruda he could never have written: “One by one the nights, between our separate cities, are added to the night that unites us”. Despite all the limitations that virtual knowledge will always have, distance is no longer an excuse. What should we expect? If the quarantine is over, they will not continue to keep us two meters away by decree, 2021 will be the year in the history of humanity with the highest population growth rate.
# Italian in the heart
