Normal

 

One tries to be mindful of one’s mindfulness, one’s mental and emotional state, as the pandemic wears on having become a factor in everyday life decisions, relationships, possibilities, and actions. And the word “normal” has slipped into regular everyday use as part of vocabulary, conversation, thoughts. I mean, in The Old Time, to borrow a term from Narnia, one did not go about everyday ordinary life with a prodding awareness of contagious sickness in the society, and “normal” wasn’t a term one heard, nor was “new normal”.

I’m sitting here in 7H knowing that Normal is a moving target state of mind in human civilization anyway. In George Washington’s day Normal was that White people owned slaves, and one traveled by horseback, or carriage, or walked.  In Lincoln’s day Normal brought slavery up for discussion and shame and elimination, and travel was by train, locally by horse, light was by candle and oil, most people did not live in cities. In my grandparents’ day Normal was resentment of Yankees, reminiscing about The Old South and “The Cause”, one rode to work by bicycle or streetcar until primitive automobiles came along, more and more people lived in towns and cities than on farms, more and more houses had an inside bathroom with flushing toilet, and gas lighting was giving way to an electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling by a wire. 

In my parents’ day Normal was that everyone went to church on Sunday, airplanes became a main means of waging war, every household had a car, eventually two cars, and a telephone, news and entertainment came by radio, there was an upstairs and downstairs bathroom, it became Normal for women to work at jobs outside the home, distance travel included whether to go by airplane, and every office had a typewriter. 

In my Time Normal was that mom & pop grocery gave way to supermarkets, television appeared, church was the center of family social life, every member of the family has a car, every bedroom its private bathroom and an extension telephone, jet planes developed in wartime replaced prop planes for war and peace, train travel faded away, electric typewriters were the thing until a new job was working at a card punch machine supporting the room size computer mainframe, and stores were allowed to be open for business on Sunday.

In the Normal of the late twentieth phasing to twenty-first century America you can get to Europe overnight, you never need cash, church on Sunday shifts to organized athletics and other family activities, everybody has a personal phone that can communicate instantly at the speed of light with anyone anywhere in the world, warfare continues its perpetual shift now from defense forces to terrorism, kids don’t especially want to learn to drive a car, a family going on a cruise is a cheap and mass form of vacation, heart problems can be corrected surgically, weather satellites tell us where every hurricane is and is headed, every home has a personal computer if you want to bother with it anymore, the ubiquitous cell phone means nobody ever again needs to converse personally with anyone even during family feasts like Thanksgiving.

In the third decade of the twenty-first century, air warfare becomes robotic, billionaire is the new millionaire, every nation wants its own nuclear bomb, pandemic strikes and everything goes up for grabs as Normal continues to evolve, it is discovered, realized, and increasingly accepted that offices are unnecessary, people who want jobs can do them just as well or better at home, people realize that personal happiness and satisfaction count in life, the automobile industry fades as the backbone of national life and economy, remote meetings and visits are almost as good or better than in person, church is offered in person or remotely by computer for those who still feel they need it after the experiment of staying away for months because of the pandemic, for emotional stability and growth school for youth and children is found better in person than remote, natural resources can be saved and cost of life and work reduced if people stop communing to work, electric cars begin stumblingly to replace gasoline cars, the entire infrastructure of civilization shifts, you no longer have to go to the store for clothes, groceries, or anything else, one car is enough, less room and fewer possessions make life simpler and more relaxed. Life continues to evolve and I for one have no wish to regress to an Old Normal.

See, for humans there’s no such thing as Normal, everything is in constant state of change. To long for the Old Normal is myopic, what is Today IS normal, tomorrow will be different even beyond today’s imagination, in life and development there never was such a settled state as Normal, Darwin was right.