I Just Want to Go Back to Normal
For many it is the defining emotion of the Covid year. “I can hardly wait to get back to normal,” or “Why can’t things be the way they were?” or “I just want to be able to go to the park (or to the pool or to the museum or . . .)”
Normality, of course, isn’t static. We live in certain ways and get used to our experiences of life. “Normal” is what we expect. As we change and our experiences change, our expectations change too. The fourth grade boy experiences one normality; six years later he is a teenager in high school whose normal world differs greatly from what he knew back then. The boy himself is changing so fast he may not notice changes in the world around him.
In adulthood we change more slowly than teenagers. We “settle down” and we think we’ve got a pretty good bead on the world. We know what to expect. We know what is “normal.”
Then something changes. Not something in me (that’s the child or teen’s experience), but something out there. Not something small or gradual—naturally the world is always changing in small ways, which we rarely notice—but in some important, attention-grabbing way. And when the change hurts, that’s when we want to go back to normal.
Some world-shaking changes are welcomed by everyone. No one says, “I want to go back to the good old days before the polio vaccine.” But changes that take away comfortable and familiar experiences—especially changes that introduce anxiety, disrupt our routines and threaten our lives—these changes make us wish for the past.
Remember 9/11. If you were an adult you knew something big had intruded into our lives, even for those who lived thousands of miles from New York and Washington. For a week, air travel was grounded. And since then, airport security has become the new normal for travelers. We’re used to it now; we expect long lines and x-ray machines.
I’ll confess: I liked air travel better before 9/11. In May that year, Ron Mock and I led a study trip to Europe. Our students had to stand in line at customs, and we had to plan ahead to cash traveler’s checks (there’s a change I don’t regret; who uses traveler’s checks anymore?), but we breezed through the airports.
And now we have the Covid year. (For months, the newspapers used all caps—COVID-19. We’re used to it now, and I simply type “Covid.” I predict it will be one of the year’s new words. Watch for an announcement from the Oxford English Dictionary.) Covid’s got all the features of unwanted change: it’s big, it’s out of our control, it forces us to change our routines, and it induces anxiety.
Not surprisingly, people wish they could go back to normal. We have “pandemic fatigue.” We want to get out of the house. We want our kids to attend school. We want our jobs back. We want to go to church. And we don’t want to wear masks.
Wishful thinking—using one’s imagination—isn’t always bad. Just think of the wonderful stories we classify as “fantasies.” But we have to be careful. Human beings have great powers of self-deception. We can easily move from “I don’t want it to be true” to “It isn’t true” or “Masks aren’t really very helpful.” Sadly, when it comes to Covid, there are plentiful voices that urge us to believe such things. There have been and always will be people who tell us what we want to hear.
When the semester started I told my students I hated wearing a mask. As a baseball fan, I regard the 2020 season—shortened to 60 games, played in empty ballparks—as a great loss. I am deeply saddened by the damage done education all over the country. Just as much, I am saddened at the economic damage caused by the Covid recession, which has hit the working poor much harder than the rich and the middle class. I wish it hadn’t happened. I just want to go back to normal. But I can’t believe what I wish.
Things will get better. We expect multiple vaccines to prove themselves safe and effective. If enough people take the vaccines (or build their own antibodies by being infected and surviving) the human population will achieve “herd immunity.” The virus will infect thousands every year, not millions. We won’t always have to wear masks. Children will return to school. It will be a new normal, not the one we remember.
