Here in my neck-o-the-woods, Monday (June 15th) marks the end of a bunch of stay-at-home orders and I’m hearing folks around me starting to talk about things getting back to “Normal.”
This kinda scares me.
Primarily, it scares me because there’s still no cure or Vaccine for the Coronavirus. We are still logging upwards of around 2oo new cases in the state per day.
If, on Monday, people go right back to the old “Normal” (Not wearing masks, etc) a lot of people are going to get infected. That’s not the “Normal” I want to get back to.
And, yes, the number of recoveries is also increasing daily. Want to know what “Recovery” is classified as?
You’re considered to have “Recovered” if YOU’RE STILL ALIVE after 30 days of the onset of the disease (according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services).
That’s it. Did it kill you within a month? If you’re able to answer that question, you’ve recovered.
Again, that’s not the “Normal” I want to get back to.
And we’ve all seen the kind of people that have turned up as a result of “Normal” going sideways.
I don’t want to go back to “Normal.” Normal, back then, was pretty crappy, to be honest.
I want a new normal. I want a new normal where it’s more important to protect, not only yourself, but others by wearing a mask, than by not taking steps to protect yourself and others. I want a normal where nobody gets to decide who gets to be human. I want a new normal where the color of your skin doesn’t matter. Where it doesn’t’ matter how you Identify. Where folk aren’t willing to knock someone down and step over them to get a freaking haircut.
And that’s not going to come easy.
But how we get there is by starting small. How we get there is by drawing a line in the sand, planting yourself at that line and saying, “No More. You will go no further.”
And I get that there’s a sliding scale of how doable that is for folks, but you know what? Doing it – whatever it is that you can do – is what matters.
You and you alone define “Normal” for you. So define it. Set boundaries, make changes, do what you can to change the sphere of the world around you.
And you’ll get there.
Good Luck.
Be safe out there. Be Excellent to Each other.
I’ll see you on Thursday.
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