Normal is what you’re used to.
I keep hearing people talk about — and seeing online posts about — how they can’t wait for “things to return to normal.”
But “normal” just refers to what you were used to before things became something different from that normal.
If you were working seven days on, seven days off, repeatedly before the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, and now you’re not, then a return to normal would be going back to that work schedule.
If you were getting a regular income check, went shopping and out to eat regularly, and met up with friends and family at cookouts and church events, but now you’re not, then a return to normal is a return to all of that.
If you were being mistreated by someone or in a bad situation before, but the shelter-in-place deal has kept you at a distance, then a return to normal would be a return to that mistreatment and bad situation.
What do we mean when we say we want things to be “normal”? Is it really a return to what we experienced before? Or is it more of a desire for things to be not what they are right now? A desire for something different, instead?
I’ve written about the pull of depression, like there’s a hidden monster in a deep, pitch-black pit with a cord tied to your brain that pulls with all its strength to get you into the pit. Those who struggle with depression must fight hard to keep from getting pulled back into it. But … in the midst of that fight to stay out of depression’s dark hole, there is a desire — even if it is as faint as the buzz of a gnat whispered into your ear — to go back to what feels familiar, rather than face something unknown that may mean we experience great joy.
The pull of the familiar, dark despair (what we consider “normal”) versus the promise of something wonderful.
We find comfort in the familiar.
It’s part of the reason why a woman whose husband repeatedly abuses her wants to stay with him. She may say it’s because she loves him and believes he loves her, too — and who am I to say that’s not really part of it — but I believe much of that desire to stay is fear of something different (even if it’s better) and a desire to stay with what is “normal.”
I remember reading a story to my children when they were very young. In it, a possum hangs by his tail from a tree limb. Another animal asks why he’s doing that and says it’s not normal. “Normal is what you’re used to,” is the answer from the dangling marsupial.
Just a side note, a dangling marsupial and a dangling participle are not the same thing.
When this situation we find ourselves in globally has passed — and it may be quite a while yet — many of us will discover that we cannot go back to what we considered normal, but will have a new normal. It’s the new pattern of life we’ll find ourselves in.
But even then, consider your situation and what you want your “normal” to be.
In “The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses,” C. S. Lewis addresses humanity’s tendency to want only what we have always experienced rather than what God has to offer us.
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Let’s not be too easily pleased.
Brett Campbell can be reached at ChunkyBrett@mail.com.
