Normal.

We all want things to be normal again, don’t we?

Can you believe that ‘normal’ was just six months ago? Less if you aren’t in Asia.

Six months. Not so long ago.

What, exactly, did we like so much about normal that we want it back again? Was it the predictability? After all, before, we knew what would happen tomorrow because it had happened yesterday. There was comfort in that.

Normal was predictable and comfortable.

On paper.

For most of us.

In reality, for many of us, normal wasn’t so predictable. Normal, back then, still had cancer. Normal, back then, still had divorce. Normal, back then, still had accidents. Normal still had tragedy. Back then, normal wasn’t normal for many of us.

Pre-Covid normal still took many of us by surprise.

But still, compared to what we are experiencing now, pre-Covid normal was heaven on earth. Right? Pre-Covid normal was something that we should be longing for, right?

Except maybe it wasn’t. Pre-covid normal took me and my two oldest children on a flight from China to America to watch my mother die. A mother who shouldn’t have died. A mother who was perfectly healthy until just a couple of months before. Pre-covid normal let me and my two oldest children watch my mother die in a hospital with my brothers and my sister. My family.

Pre-Covid normal could be brutal.

Pre-Covid normal could be a bitch.

Pre-Covid saw many of us lose our parents and our children and our friends and our loved ones to all kinds of heartbreak.

Pre-covid normal was not necessarily such a great place.

And yet, we all want things to be normal again. We all want Covid to be behind us. But maybe this is the wrong thing for us to want.

Covid has something to teach us, if we are open to learning. After all, Covid has forced us to slow down, to consider others before ourselves, to reprioritize.

Covid has forced us to reconsider what should be normal in our lives.

Covid has forced us to reconsider.

Reconsider.

I don’t have an answer for this question. I don’t know what normal should be for me these days, let alone what normal should be for you. I just know that opportunities like this don’t come around often, and I don’t want to waste it.

Personally, I don’t want things to return to normal.

I want things to be better for all of us.

Now we just need to figure out how what that means.

Our new normal needs to be better. It just needs to be.