Normal

I woke up thinking about the words “new normal.”

I’ve been using those words a lot lately, when I describe…well, almost everything.

Like many other people these days, I find myself looking back over time and then comparing that time to now. As I’m remembering, I might shake my head, or laugh, or cry. I sometimes say things like wow and ugggghhh and never saw that coming. I also say things like yay and how amazing, because goodness always exists amidst the challenges.

And then, after I’ve thought about the past Things or Events or Outcomes or Changes (all capitalized, because that is just something that my brain does, how it classifies these moments), I shift back into the Now. Today.

And I ask myself, how do I define normal? I ask myself, why is this Thing normal but this other Thing not? I ask myself, what makes this new normal?

In simple terms, today is the same as yesterday, as the day prior, as so many days that came before. I wake up, I do the Things, the Things happen, and then the day is done.

It is in that space of doing the Things and that space of the Things happen that new appears. Normal, it seems, is always there.

Perhaps, then, the words “new normal,” are a distraction. It’s possible that the effort I put into wrapping my head around the implications of these words, trying to lasso the meaning, understand it, anticipate and predict, isn’t as necessary or even as complicated as it appears to be.

Perhaps “new normal” is just another way to describe the experience of living. Of being alive, having a life.

Perhaps it’s really that simple.