How I Want My Future, Post-Pandemic Self To Live
Photo by Hannah Reding on Unsplash
What is normal and how do we return to it?
My wife and I have been thinking and talking a lot about questions like this over the past weeks. Normalcy seems to be the topic on the tips of everyone’s tongues, yet I’ve found few people who can give a good definition of what it truly means to return to normal.
This craving and urge for normalcy is odd and offsetting to the mind of most of western society. Before this pandemic, we all spent so much of our time, energy, and efforts seeking after the extraordinary. To be “normal” was to be bland, vague, boring. In many circles, normal was synonymous with drab. We wanted the next vacation, the next experience, the extravagant or never-before-seen, or limited supply only. The marketing and mass media efforts worked to convince us of what we were lacking or the idea that we couldn't possibly be happy with the status quo. It has only taken a few weeks of something quite extraordinary to completely disrupt decades of infiltration and influence on our psyche.
Now, we want the normal. We have begun to crave it. We want to go to the grocery store without looking like Bane in the Dark Knight Rises. We want to go to the park and not have to worry about mentally measuring the distance between ourselves and the other strangers nearby, let alone the distance between our kids and the other kids on the playgrounds. Many parents would give almost anything for a few normal days of school or a few normal workdays uninterrupted by a crawling baby or a screaming toddler.
We may think that when COVID-19 has begun to recede into 3rd or 4th-page news that we can simply look in our bathroom mirrors and return to who we were before this crisis. But that is a delusion. You will never again be the same person you were before this experience. It is that monumental, that life-altering. It is that disruptive and that unprecedented.
For the first time in the history of the United States, every single state is under a disaster declaration simultaneously. Other countries are experiencing similar history-altering decisions. Considering this, we are naive to think that any semblance of normalcy is on the other side of this maze.
However, our hope and belief that life may pick right back up where it left off in early March points less towards blatant naivety and more towards a cultural and societal lack of grieving for what was. Many of us don’t want to give up the way things were. We don’t want to admit that we’re afraid that the days ahead may not measure up to what we were used to. We don’t want to entertain the notion that unemployment and an extended sequestered economy may have personal and tangible impact for months and years to come. There is no magic flick of a wand or a snap of the fingers to fix or improve the deep tread marks pressed into the supple soil of a hurting and scared world.
And yet, there is something beautiful on the horizon, a glimmer that when glanced can start a spark in even the coldest and most fearful of hearts. As we individually and collectively grieve, we move from denial to anger and into the bargaining stage most of us find ourselves in now. As with any form of grief, as we continue to learn that we cannot bargain with such a global disruption, many will move into a sense of depression at what seems to be a hopeless horizon. But beyond depression lies the secret of grief in this season: acceptance.
Acceptance does not mean returning to what was. What was is no longer and will not be returning. Our past views of normal have become mirages. Instead, as we move toward acceptance, we have the ability to wrap a new definition of the word normal around the skeleton of the circumstances we find ourselves in. That is the light worth running to. That is the hope worth remembering and holding on to in the months ahead. That although this crisis will strip away everything that we thought we knew to be solid and sure, humanity has always been resilient and never more so than in its ability to redefine what the word normal means.
When we set off to redefine what our new normal will look like, there will be expectations and pitfalls to avoid. There will be marketing companies that will move into full swing to sell an unproven message intended to placate our fears and capitalize on hesitancies. There will be relationships and friendships with some around us that may not be able to adapt to the new landscape and gravity of this unexplored terrain. In the midst of these temptations and trials, there will be an opportunity for you and yours to reflect, remember, and resolve to create new standards, new pillars of what it means to be human, to be normal.
For my wife and I, as we discussed what we would like to mix into the concrete of our future foundation, we’ve often returned to a list of similar practices. There were particles of each of these practices within our past definition of what was normal. However, this season has been a great strainer, helping us sift through the sediment of our lives to reveal a handful of small stones, flecks of gold amidst the avalanche of otherwise superfluous and indistinguishable noise.
These short and simple practices are what we want to remember in the season we will come to know as “post-pandemic.” We want these hopes to become habits, these thoughts to be steel beams in the bedrock of how we define our normal lives. Together, we want to:
call our families more
value the uniqueness of our friends
work to remember work isn’t everything
leave some space in our schedules
be content with what money we have
see and serve our neighbors
go on more walks
trust that more sleep is a good idea
believe in our strengths
love each other in ways that bring about soft, simple smiles.
The grieving process takes time. It is different for every person and it is okay if, in your processing, you are ahead or behind those around you. Comparison has no place here. As you process, may we encourage you with these words from Dr. Caroline Leaf,
“In the rush to return to normal, use this time to consider which parts of normal are worth rushing back to.”
If you are able, we encourage you to sift through your own hopes and habits during these days. Maybe you too can come up with your list of how you hope to re-define your normal. In the midst of great difficulty lies a wondrous opportunity, small and easily overlooked, but present nonetheless. Our hope is that you find that, and in doing so, live a life you were made to enjoy and pursue.