Dear Normal, Everyone wants you back. It seems every day of this late-stage pandemic era is marked with someone wistfully talking about Normal: going back to you, starting new with you.
FILE - In this Dec. 21, 2020, file photo, a family walks past Cinderella Castle in the Magic Kingdom, at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. FILE - In this March 19, 2020, file photo, a subway passenger uses a tissue to protect her hand while holding onto a pole as COVID-19 concerns drive down ridership in New York.
It felt normal to want Normal back at first. Last year, in those first months, daydreaming of you was a constant daily escape from all of the endless dire possibilities. I wanted my life back. I wanted the control. Searching for normal went up again around the start of the school year in September and around the holidays in late November. But as the search trends show, these desires for normalcy ebb and flow, constantly fading and morphing.. So much had already changed. Yet it felt then that we might just go back to Normal with the snap of a finger.
The experience of living through the yearlong aberration feels like the rapid-fire history verses of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” — condensed into one tumultuous year. The world shuts down,After living through all that, going back to Normal feels more and more like returning to a lover we just can’t seem to leave.
These are problems that don’t have easy solutions and may not even be solved in our lifetimes. Sure, many people may want things to change.
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