Kia ora Koutou,
I keep reading/hearing… ‘when we get back to normal’ and ‘it’ll be okay when we’re back to normal’ and even, ‘I just want to get back to normal’.
Forget it. The ‘normal’ we had before Covid? Its never coming back and all the repining is not going to bring that ‘normal’ back.
Before the 2nd World War’s end in 1946 everyone talked about ‘getting back to normal’ only to find they would never go back. Both men and women had seen and done things that would never take them back to what was considered ‘normal’ before. A world upheaval like war or epidemic takes whatever we call normal, scrunches it up, chucks it because it no longer works.
War and epidemics are not the only harbinger of change. After the Waterfront Lockout in 1951 everything was going to be good once we were back to normal. Well it wasn’t. And we didn’t. Wharfies had no money coming in, big bills were run up at the grocer’s and gradually, steadily paid back, but even making that last payment of the debt to that kind and patient grocer, did not bring back what they thought of as normal. Even those who scabbed didn’t have the easy time they were promised. Guilt art letting their mates down, employers who looked at them with an expression that said, you let your mates down, will you let me down too? Long memories.
Protesting against the Vietnam war, marching for women’s rights, everyone’s so-called normal changed. The moment that Land March, Whina Cooper at its head, happened in 1975, normal changed again.
After we marched in 1981 and 1986 we created new normals which (briefly) became the norm although when the financial crisis of 1986/87 brought chaos and fear, when the then 1990s government’s harsh welfare restrictions happened, even the hysterical and silly drama over what might eventuate when midnight turned us from 1999 to 2000 and, according to the experts, armageddon would blast in, wrecking everyone’s computers, telescopes, stealing our normal. So we waited and counted down to midnight and the realisation that the upheaval so confidently predicted, flew out the window and we learned, yet again, that experts, for all their hysterics, their warnings, their learned talk, their fears, their hiding in the bunker at Parliament, were quite wrong and even quite silly, as New Year 2000 rolled in smoothly without fuss.
Technology, robots, kids staring at screens, kids not staring at screens, kids reading books, kids not reading books, kids reading the ‘wrong’ books, more marches, people reading ebooks instead of print books, oh dear, the world is going to hell in a hand basket, when will we get back to ‘normal’?
Somehow we cling grimly to this fantasy we call normal. We do things a certain way, at certain times, we dress a certain way for certain things, we eat at certain times, we walk at certain times, when we garden we separate flowers and vegetables and we call it normal.
Life brings its own changes to ‘normal’ too. Just growing up, growing old, changes one’s normal. There are deaths, illnesses, breakups, job losses, even retirement changes ‘normal’ so I’m told – I’ve never tried it so I have to take someone else’s word for that.
Life is a knockabout, a dance, sometimes great, sometimes good for you, sometime good for me, sometimes the music plays our song and often it doesn’t. The only thing we can call normal is the certainty that there is no such thing.
Sure there’ll be a vaccine, sure all populations will have it, but what comes after that will not be normal. It might be good in some places, bad in others, and oh hell, will you look at that kid lying on the grass reading a book when she should be staring at a screen doing her schoolwork. Oh why can’t life be normal?
Watching that kid lying on the lawn reading a book instead of looking at a screen tells me that whatever us humans do or suffer or experience, there is no one normal, there is only ever, now.
So make the most of it – that floating, shapeshifting, happy/sad, smiling/frowning now is all the normal there is. That kid lying on the grass reading when she should be staring at a screen doing her homework knows this instinctively – when she grows up she’ll have to learn it all over again. And again.
That’s normal…
Renée
