When Alexandre O’Neill wrote it, he didn’t know that we could apply it to today's times so well. “The unoriginal Poem about Fear” reached me on the phone through the voice and gestures of actor Ivo Canelas.
Endless times I heard and repeated the video while thinking that fear also causes deeply rare, beautiful moments, like this video, but as in so many other gestures and decisions that show that fear is the springboard for change and realization of the plans that we are kept in the drawers of conscience just for the laziness of attaining them.
In the message we exchanged to authorize me to publish his video, I didn’t get to tell him that this was the moment that inspired us to work this month.
We speak, therefore, of fear, for, as Jean Paul Sartre wrote, “All men are afraid. Whoever is not afraid is not normal; this has nothing to do with courage”. Faced with a new reality, let us face fear as an inherent element in our new life equation, as explained by Pedro Afonso, Professor at FMUL and Psychiatrist at Santa Maria Hospital.
But we must keep in mind that it is in the face of adversity that plans B and C are devised, that the strongest human constructions and dynamics are born and that fear, not blocking us, reveals in us our best side, the most courageous and challenging.
Speaking of fear, this month is talking about the success of the distance learning classes, implemented in a tremendous joint work involving lecturers, course committees, students and the AEFML, and technical and administrative teams that from the beginning, from morning to night, ensure that everything will go well. We also asked what these people had to say about time management, at a time when they take on a thousand jobs, all of them claiming permanent priority. Managing anxiety is, therefore, a necessary task, discussed in a Webinar organized by Espaço S that tried to appease the theme. On our side, we spoke with some of our students who told us about their concerns and states of mind.
In this Institution, whose responsibility is to train the best in their areas of choice, how is a doctoral thesis without academic costume is to be evaluated and presented from home? We spoke to the protagonists and ask them for their views.
And, whereas until recently we used the word zoom to increase the focus of a camera, now zoom has become the main address for professionals and students. The first zoom master degree at FMUL is described by the president of the panel of that day, Professor Rui Tato Marinho.
At a time of webinars, be sure to revisit this month's topics in our FMUL talks. And read the May list of the most important topics we write about on what remains the main headline, Covid-19.
Having demystified fear and realized the many positive aspects that fear has given us, we ended in glory with the European accreditation of the Cardiovascular Rehabilitation Centre of the University of Lisbon and a tribute to our scientists and lecturers, in a month that honours them on the 16th.
It was fear that made us write, look for new people and ask them to talk about fear and it was in this meeting of themes and people that we understood O’Neill a little better. After all, fear has already given us heroes!
Joana Sousa
Editorial Team
news@medicina.ulisboa.pt
Joana Sousa
Equipa Editorial
news@medicina.ulisboa.pt
