Getting "Normal"
- aarshimajumder
- May 15, 2022
- 3 min read
There are more things in life which are simpler than the normal. Still, we prefer normalcy more than anything else - despite its complications, despite its sacrifices. I had been reading a novel (you might have heard of it) called The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, and towards its closing pages he declaimed that it is a boon to be born "normal". And honestly, it is. One would rather be normal than linger in an opposed realm exceeding all definition. One, of course, must find some course in the midst of the everyday: something which moors one to the continual shore of habit and thought. To live a good life, to leave it well; doing extraordinary things does have its limit. The figurative "sky" is held in question. You are not held back: and yet you are.
You might see where I'm going with this. I started writing here in the first place to make something out of the pandemic. When everyone was bound in at home, I saw the people around me engaging themselves in numberless feats: some launched podcasts, some begun Instagram pages for a social cause. I turned out of my rocked island of slovenly days to look about myself - just for once. It's funny how I had never done that before. It's funny how I started thinking for myself much later than everyone else expected me to. Being late doesn't mean that one is finished. That is very well one of the things I have now come to believe in for a long time.
The world is returning to its essential. It's summer break for me here. Perhaps, I knew somewhere deep inside that things would inevitably revert to the way they always were - that again people would start taking things for granted which they had lost in the pandemic. Everything would commence to be normal, people trying to pleasantly forget all that has transpired, for the sake of moving forward with a clear conscience. It's a common saying now to learn to live with COVID-19. No longer are we fearful towards it. At best, an internal passivity endures.
Some of the people I know had said that things were getting "too normal too fast". I suppose that's the sole power we humans have a right to. One is irremediably terrified, and then one grows into that terror complacently. It's sweet. The fear of the "original normal" now making its arrival into mainstream society is doubtlessly helping us. Normal is good. But let us not simply forget what the "past normal" has made us think of. All normals have a path to our hearts.
Getting "normal" might be one of the most difficult things man has ever had to do. This is perhaps why the conception of rebels were brought into existence. But that's just derogatory. Entitling one to be a "rebel" instead of terms like gamechanger or revolutionizer just pushes the concerned individual into a box. Or perhaps we can't imagine things without classifying them into the proverbial box.
Many say that they don't like putting themselves into the "box". Some say: think out of the "box". What do we know of the box's herd mentality to diverge from it? We can only live in normalcy: and nothing else. All we know for sure is the evolutionary "normal", because people in all centuries live out those epochs. Even the process of "getting" normal is a creative one. We might think that being normal means being mundane. It's not. Being "normal" gives us a chance to make something.
Everything is normal only if we convince ourselves that it is so.
Should that necessarily be such a bad thing?
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