The New Normal — Or How I Learned To Embrace Change And Loss Amid COVID-19
By: Todd Folstad
Tags: Adjustment, Peace, Community, Life Lessons, Covid 19

by Todd Folstad

I found this meme online today and it seemed particularly relevant to our current worldwide scenario.

Every day you hear another talking-head sing the praises of all of us just “getting back to normal”. I’m here to help slow your collective roll and remind you that “NORMAL” is a relative term.

Once the all-clear has sounded, does that mean we all go out and start crowding into bars, restaurants, movie theaters, clubs and stores as if nothing had happened? I’d like to be the calm voice of reason that whispers — NO.

If we dive back in with both feet, we will still fall prey to this nasty virus, for which we have not properly acclimated to yet. The is a vaccine and by the best estimates by the best medical personnel, it will still be deep into spring or possibly early summer before most people will have been vaccinated.

When we do finally leave our homes and get back to our everyday lives, remember to do so slowly or risk the chances of igniting additional waves of this current virus.

We need to do better as the meme suggests. Just look at what has happened in the 9 months that we’ve been engaged just here in the USA. People are learning that just staying home and occasionally connecting with others via electronic media is NOT how we are built to live. As humans, we are hardwired for contact with other humans, be it family, friends, co-workers, etc. We NEED to get back to that. No society can live in a vacuum if it’s citizenry cannot properly interact on basic human levels.

The earth in just this time has begun to heal parts of itself. The air is cleaner than it’s been in decades without all the extra pollution being pumped into it. The water is doing better without its extra-dosage of boat, trash, and runoff being leaked along its beds and shores, and the land itself is being allowed to rest from the aggressive growth cycles that we subject it to in the rush to plant and harvest more and faster-growing crops.

Maybe, just maybe, this virus was the earth and its creatures forcing the human part of this equation to take a pause, re-evaluate, and hopefully come back smarter and less aggressive to this 3rd rock from the sun that we all inhabit.

I for one will be taking things at a slower pace. I’ve already made many adjustments to my life in just this time frame that will allow me to continue them once the all-clear is given. I plan on walking more and driving a bit less (except where work is concerned). I plan on getting out and meeting people in my neighborhood so that I can put names with the faces that I’ve often seen, but know nothing about. I plan on spending more time relaxing and reading to sharpen my mind and to learn more about what I can do, individually to help continue this swell of assistance to our planet.

If we all just take a few minutes a day to reflect on what we have done and what we are about to do, we may find that this break-neck pace we are all in, is in actuality, the start of our own dystopian lifestyles which are, by their nature, unattainable and unsustainable.

If nothing else, this brief respite has given all of us a chance to view life through a new set of filters, one from a bygone era, when life was not so rushed and people didn’t rely on everything being available 24/7, 365. If we come away with this lesson, then it may well be one of the best things to ever come out of this much suffering.

I’ll close with a quote from Henry David Thoreau . . .