Let's Not Be Normal

I've had this thought permeating my day.  A thought about AFTER.  What are we (teachers, Americans, world citizens) going to be like?  Will anything have changed?  What do I hope will change?

I believe that we, as a culture, have been overextending ourselves far too much.  We are all too busy.  We work many more hours than much of the world.  Those with children have them scheduled for so many learning opportunities, athletics, arts, etc.  We're bombarded by advertising, showing the ideal family (with clean house, tastefully decorated, and everyone looks clean and well-dressed and no one's wearing coffee stains or having to sniff their shirt in the morning to see if a cat peed on it*).

We are like dogs and cars; we're continually chasing after something.  Anything.

My husband and I don't have kids, so we avoid much of this.  Also, we're both pretty sluggish, both by nature and by consequence of my health conditions. I used to be a workaholic, and I was going and going and going all the time.  That got left by the wayside about six diagnoses ago.  But I see this around me and I'm always amazed at how much people manage to fit in.  I wonder when people sleep.  Do they sleep?

I'm looking at pictures of absolutely empty (of people) urban downtowns, shared on social media.  Sun shining, buildings gleaming, streets completely empty, sidewalks bare.  It's like a science fiction dystopian movie, but it's also--beautiful. Quiet. Peaceful.

On facebook, friends are sharing pictures of fun games they're doing, crafts made, tiktoks dreamt up and executed with wit and whimsy. There are homeschooling fiascoes--most with humor--and serious talks about calming fears.

People are checking in on each other. Finding out what others need. Sharing positive memes and friendly tidbits. Coming together.

Now, I know there are many people having to go in to work still, and many on the front lines of providing health care, stocking and clerking grocery stores, driving trucks, keeping the peace, teaching via Zoom, etc.  And I'm very grateful.

But for those of us whose lives have suddenly become less full--for good and bad--this is a taste of something possibly sweet. Perhaps in a few weeks, or a few months (more likely), when we have returned to our non-COVID19 lives--maybe we can infuse it with a slowness, a welcome emptiness, for more balance.

We can learn from this unintended lessons.

*I  may have divulged far too much about my home life here.

And from later on that season...but very much related:

Something keeps running through my mind, this the 57th day of sheltering at home (first by choice and then by decree).  It's not a novel idea, and others are thinking it, too. But it's big.  Massive.  It's an official Big Lesson Idea from Lockdown.  And it's this:

We do not have to go back to normal.

And we shouldn't.

Normal--i.e. life in recent America up through the middle of March, 2020--was a divisive, ugly, greedy, desperate place, run by clocks and dashing about, with the ultra wealthy gaining obscene, truly obscene amounts of money while the rest of the 99% lost, and grew more desperate. It was Capitalism run to its natural conclusion, which--as we've always known--is collapse.  Utter ruin, and if we're lucky, without revolution and bloodshed, but history's pretty clear even about that latter.  And in the meantime, we suffer.  It's long and drawn out and we go through horrific death throes.

To go hand-in-hand with that, of course, Normal was the most corrupt and bewildering administration ever in the United States.  It looks exactly like medieval monarchies, with the same insane statements, proclamations, corruption, and narcissism. [Ed: And now, in 2026?  Makes Trump I seem nearly sane.  It's bizzarro world.]

And we all know how all European medieval monarchies ended.  We may like the music and art, and mince about in costume at Ren Faire (which rocks!), but it was not a pleasant time to be alive, unless you were King.  Or Queen.  But mostly King.

Our American courtiers kowtow and kneel to our Baby Hands King, and the once proud Republican Party, which used to have ideals, is forever sullied by its association with, and propping up of, the current "President."

Normal is eating plastic food packed with sugars, chowing down while standing up between classes or meetings, or in the car as we race to yet another day of work, or another "leisure activity."

Normal is for-profit health care that demeans both doctor and patient.  Normal is GoFundMe being the biggest financier of health in the country, and millions of us deathly afraid--literally deathly--of losing our jobs and hence our health insurance.  (And our current administration still wants to bring back pre-existing conditions exemptions for the gold-hogging insurance companies.)

Normal is standardized achievement testing in schools, designed and implemented by people who've never educated a single child, which determines whose jobs stay and which schools are closed.  Despite the fact that anyone who's ever taken a statistics class knows that it's faulty to use a test to study results for which is was not designed.

Normal is facing a pandemic where it's considered just another Tuesday when trillions--trillions--of dollars are found overnight for the Ruling Class, but it's considered verboten to discuss paying people to stay at home to keep us all safe, as other countries have done.

Normal is a time of meanness and grossness, where it's considered moral to put babies in cages and brag and lie at every turn, but somehow it's immoral to protest racism, and make claims that it's a good thing to care for each other in a community, even if that means a bit of personal annoyance, like wearing masks when in public. [Ed. 2026: Oh, I don't have to the heart to even try to sum up these categories in 2026.]

Normal is toxic lawns instead of food gardens, family time spent in front of smart phones, Reality TV, economy above all, and disconnection.

Yes, I said disconnection.  We weren't sheltering at home, but we were, largely speaking, disconnected in so many ways.

The irony is now that we can't be in the same rooms, we're finding things that do, indeed, connect us.

For those of us who are not heroes working the front lines, and sometimes killing ourselves doing so, life has slowed down somewhat.  Working from home--or not being able to work--has changed our routines. Changed the view out the windows. Changed our perspectives.

I, like so many, many others in the U.S., am learning to bake bread (and other things).  What that phenomenon is, is connection.  Connection to our past.  Connection to our families. It's digging our hands in, literally, to something deeper and a hell of a lot more substantial than what I now see as the tasteless, flimsy loaves that we usually buy. And for me, personally, it's signaling the end to a decades-long food prep phobia, so it's opening up entire worlds to me, but that's more personal than general.

We're posting pictures of our wild, uncut hair (those of us who aren't protesting with guns, holding signs that say "I need a haircut," as if that trumped anyone's right to not catch a deadly disease from them) and laughing.  We're checking in on friends.  Every day, I see or hear about people leaving gifts of baked goods--or toilet paper-- on others' doorsteps. People are holding up signs in their windows, facing elderly neighbors, to communicate and check in on them, safely. People are stepping out on balconies and playing music, or leading exercise, for their neighborhoods.

And many of us are taking the time to put our feet up and have a hot cup of coffee, un-worried about the state of our clothes, the mess of our hair, of the lack of makeup.

We're uncovering.

We're DIScovering.

We're becoming...more human. I truly believe so.

Never have I seen so many people posting pictures of the jigsaw puzzles they're doing, and there's such joy in this!  Those little pieces coming together transcend the one card table (or hallway floor) and join us all in discovering a NEW normal.

Let's not hope for normal.

Let's never go back to normal.

That normal was not.

We have the rare chance to reinvent, reinstall, reinvigorate, redefine, refine, review, and refresh. Let's not lose this.  Let's USE this.

Let's build the world we always said we really wanted.

In the meantime, I'll meet you via Facetime from my deck, in my yoga pants and shaggy hair, dough splotched on my arms, with a cuppa, and we can plan our gardens together, Friend.