“We will not go back to normal…”
I think this is a really interesting quote from Sonya Renee Taylor: “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”
I think she makes some very good points. First, we won’t be going back. We can’t. There is never a situation where we can go back to something regardless of what that something was. A moment in time is a moment in time. Once it’s passed, its gone. Variables change, so the only choice we have is to move forward. We can either fool ourselves into thinking we can go back in time, or we can acknowledge that we can’t, and adapt to the new “now”. We get stuck when we continually try to go back to what was. Let it go. Glean new insights from your experiences and move forward. Stay fresh and relevant by always pushing on yourself to keep growing and changing.
Second, I really like what she has to say about “Normal never was.” For years I’ve been concerned about the ever-increasing pace of our world. Our technology has made it possible to, indeed, “Work smarter, not harder.” but instead of doing that we’ve revved ourselves up to just work all the time. We’ve replaced spending time with family and friends to build and enrich those relationships with always being busy with something, anything, so we can’t take time to acknowledge the veracity of the next part of Sonya’s assertion…that we’ve “normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack.” Our values have become skewed so that we value money and things above people. Both money and things are cruel taskmasters. No matter how much you give to them it’s never enough. They keep demanding more and more of your humanity until there is nothing left of you.
Finally — ”We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.” I so agree with this. It’s as if the entire world has been placed on “Pause” for a moment while we try to figure out how to cope with this “thing”. How are we doing? I don’t know. And, truth to tell, neither do you… or anyone else. This particular kind of catastrophe has never befallen us before. Our world has never been this connected before, and that has created variables that are brand new. We need to find solutions that are viable, equitable, and sustainable for as many people as possible rather than for an elite few. What is that going to look like? Your guess is as good as mine; however, let’s embrace the whole world, and the environment, and future generations as we move forward. Let’s use all of the technology we have to, as Sonya suggests, “… stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”
We’re in the weeds, folks. Let’s work together to get out. 🙂
