Do you remember NORMAL?
Those days when you were in control.
When you knew within reason, and with so much certainty that you didn't need to think about it, what would happen most of the time, apart from when you didn't, but that was actually ok as well, most of the time - sudden deaths, accidents and things like finding out that your friend is pregnant and discovering someone you thought was younger than you is the same age as you not, withstanding!
Those days when NORMAL equalled a range of 'unpredictable' that was comfortably predictable. You could pivot and change direction without much disturbance of the 'force', without stepping outside the normal comfort zone within which you went about your business, your pleasure, your up and your down time, your past and your future time, your now, and certainly your never time. Simply,you knew what you would and would not be prepared to do and all without really thinking about it.
You just knew what your parameters were, which meant you could function on a 'higher than normal' level, because NORMAL was 'done' and just ticking away in eyesight, but not really taking up much of your mind.
AND when abnormal things happened, as they did now and then, you knew you had a NORMAL place to anchor to and usually it involved a cup of tea/ any drink you like, maybe some tissues and something on the tele that helped you feel NORMAL.
And then one day - for me the 17th March 2020 - just like that, NORMAL vanished. Overnight all the normal stuff leaked away and we know what happened - the outcome of a Global Pandemic finally hit the UK and amongst terrifying data and daily briefings, toilet paper, pasta and hand sanitiser became more desirable and valuable than platinum.
I am not going to commentate on Covid 19 from here on in as we all have our own story.
My focus is on our desire for NORMAL, cunningly hidden in what people are calling the New Normal, which IS NOT A THING!
What do we want? NORMAL!! When do we want it? NOW!!
But more importantly WHY do we want it?
We want it because it's not exhausting and it doesn't take up all out thought space.
We want it because we feel in control with it.
NORMAL feels like we have won, like we have bent all the forces in the world to our own will and we can rest assured that 'I'm safe, I'm in control, I know things and can I also bake a cake, or write a blog, or drive a car, push a shopping trolley or care for a sick relative OR pet all at the same time.'
NORMAL is essentially your parents raising up the stabilisers on your learner bike, so you think they are stabilising you, but in fact they are not.
When you take them off though, crashes happen...….until you get use to balancing on your own and then you never forget how to ride a bike and that goes in your NORMAL file.
Which brings me to POSSIBLE.
Everything IS possible until it isn't which is a whole other sensitive issue - but for the purposes of this blog, we will surmise that for the majority of people EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE. And for those people who might need some additional support for ACCESSIBLE/POSSIBLE, they can make it look really easy.
So to end part 1.
NORMAL is normal
New NORMAL is not a thing - its a lie that we tell ourselves to us to make us think that we will be in control again - which we will let me tell you - but it won't be a NEW NORMAL, it will simply be normal.
POSSIBLE is something we can consider, as in 'Hmmmm, yeah, it's possible'
THE NEW POSSIBLE is what we are being given right now, today, in this UNPRESEDENTED time.
Time to think about what's actually possible that will be normal when we get our balance again.
We won't go BACK to NORMAL, we can go FORWARD to POSSIBLE.
End of Part One
No comments:
Post a Comment