I HATE The Term "New Normal"

I had no idea what photo to choose for this post, so I settled on one of some masks that I made since they are part of this new Adjusted Reality (not the New Normal). I was trying to figure out why they looked funny though, and then I realized they didn’t have the elastic in them when I took this photo. Oops.

I was shopping with a friend the other day and on the front door of the store, they had listed their “rules” for shopping in the store (sanitize on the way in, wear a mask, don’t enter if you feel ill). These rules are all reasonable and honestly, are pretty similar regardless of where you go. At the bottom of the list, however, was a phrase that got my back up: “Welcome to our New Normal.”

“New Normal”

I know I’ve ranted about that phrase before, but I want to really dig into why I hate it so much, and why I think it’s actually a dangerous phrase.

We are living through a global health pandemic. Across the globe, we, as humans, are facing similar circumstances. The last global health pandemic was a century ago. We’ve certainly had health pandemics before (AIDS, SARS, H1N1) but none have hit us like COVID-19. Every person, every country, is fighting this CoronaVirus. People are scared; our lives have been instrumentally interrupted; they look significantly different than they did in February.

There is nothing about the changes we have to make that are normal.  The social isolation, fear and worry to this degree aren’t normal; or I don’t believe they should be. If we look back to flight or fight, we are living it all the time. It isn’t an isolated incident where we see a danger, adrenaline rushes and we draw our sword or retreat. The worry surrounds us and crops up in new ways. In the beginning, it was how do we buy our groceries safely? Since then, it has extended to, how do we maintain social connection, how do we safely navigate return to school, and so many other questions that seem to pop up all the time.

Deciding whether it is safe to send your kids back to school, or whether you should hug your grandparents isn’t normal. Up until 6 months ago, I didn’t have those thoughts. Once this pandemic ends (and it WILL end), I don’t expect to have those thoughts. They may feel normal now, but if we normalize them, then we run the risk of them sticking after CoronaVirus ends.

I will admit that “new normal” gets my back up; it is like nails on a chalkboard to me. I am not sure I can truly articulate how much I hate that phrase (and I’m not totally convinced this blog post truly conveys it). Perhaps it is my coping mechanism, but I think it is deeper than that.

I have taken to using different phrasing: “adjusted reality” or “current reality” are my two most common. Reality is what is. My experience today is my reality, and I use adjusted to mean that it is different than what I would normally expect; I use current to illustrate that I do not believe this to be long-term. Will COVID change things long-term? Sure. But I believe that at my core, what will change isn’t what I hold dear: social relationships and physical connection. I don’t want to use any verbiage that would indicate that I believe how we are living today is how I expect or want to live down the road.