A deserted Starbucks during the pandemic.
The media has labeled the pandemic the “new normal” and of course this concept of a “new normal" got me thinking. What is normal? Did we ever have a normal? In eighth grade we read the book Extraordinary by Miriam Spitzer Franklin and, although I did not like it because I thought it felt like a copy of the novel Wonder, the message inside the book stayed in my mind for the past four years. In the novel the audience is taught that there are no normal or ordinary things. Everyone and everything is unique. This message I took with me throughout high school. I always strived to be an extraordinary student, not an ordinary one. I wanted to be the one who strived to complete an extra step in the project to get bonus points or the one who wrote a creative story instead of an essay. I always wanted to make everything unique.
With this new so-called “normal” I decided to reflect on the word normal. Was there ever a normal? Well I guess you could say yes, people once flew on planes every day, adults went to work and children went to school, everyone could eat at restaurants, and parties were always more than ten people. Then I thought about the opposing side, maybe in another universe that would not be considered normal. Maybe eating dinner at a restaurant is anything but normal in another universe. Maybe restaurants do not even exist. Or maybe adults go to school and children go to work. Our idea of normal is what society has told us are the rules and norms to follow. This does not mean that our previous lives were normal and the so-called normal we all grew up with is far from happening again anytime soon.
So maybe we should stop calling it the “new normal” and call it the new way of life. Life before the pandemic was never normal either. Maybe compared to life now it was normal, but people did crazy non-normal and extraordinary things before the pandemic. And who says we will not get our previous lives back. Eventually, people will stop wearing masks, hand sanitizer and toilet paper will be back on the shelves, and restaurants will be packed with people. Let's remember that this is not the “new normal” in fact it's not normal, no it's an unusual situation. The past normal everyone keeps referring to will come back again, it may take years, but one day we will not be afraid to sneeze or cough in public and we will be able to hug and embrace each other again. This is not the new normal because there is no normal. There is just an evolving and changing world that will eventually go back to the extraordinary daily life activities that we all took part in every day, but until then remember to take every day one step at a time. We will all get through this together!