29: The Problem Is Normal

I don’t mean to discount the impact of Covid-19, nor be indifferent to the trauma of ill health, the stress of worry or sorrow if a loved one dies. But it does occur to me that perhaps… COVID-19 isn’t really the problem here. It’s a symptom. The problem is “Normal.”

You know… Normal as in foreseeable, controllable, demarcated, boundaried, safe, secure, ‘the sun will come up tomorrow’ sort of thing. A world where plans can be made, and dreams really do come true. Where life expectancies are forecast as real the weather. Usual. Standard. Typical. Common. Routine. Conventional. Controllable. Sure. Certain. Expected.

…Believing in Normal may get us through the night; remind us to buy winter boots, grow our meagre investments, schedule events, create strategic plans…do more, run faster, and sometimes even leap tall buildings in a single bound. But believing in Normal is not normal. Believing in Normal is habituative, making us dull, ordinary, average, and increasingly less able to change, adapt or imagine anything else…anything other than…privileged predictability. Our own Normal. So here we are.

Nobody ‘planned’ this…this unprecedented event...now being referred to as The New Normal?

Art inspired by this confession…