I was in a class recently where the pandemic was discussed, with the concept of finding a blessing in the crisis. This may seem hard to do, as we don’t tend to enjoy going through a crisis, so finding a blessing in it seems to be a tall order! The analogy was presented that a crisis can be like a detour that takes us off the path we are on and puts us on a different, unplanned path. This can be inconvenient, frustrating, and time consuming. It can evoke feelings of fear, helplessness, anger and despair. But then the image was added to the analogy that “detours often happen because something is under construction”. Something new will be built and this may be better than what was there before. This can alter our perspective, shift our paradigm, or change our experience of the situation!
I saw a meme of Samuel L. Jackson pointing a gun and looking very tough in a scene from Pulp Fiction. It said “Say The New Normal ONE MORE TIME”. It made me laugh. I am hearing “The New Normal” so frequently, we are talking about this a lot. To quote another meme, I never thought that “I wouldn’t touch him with a 10 foot pole” would become a national policy, but here we are. We are all doing things in a different way and we can rail against it or we can embrace it. There are a lot of things we can’t control, but our reaction is one thing that we can control.
For instance, the face mask. Lately there have been many varied discussions and studies about the effectiveness of a face mask protecting you from getting the virus and from spreading the virus. I know people that feel very strongly that their rights are violated if they are required to wear a mask, and that breathing the air they exhale is highly detrimental to their health. I am not going to debate the effectiveness or health risks. The bottom line is that for many people, this provides security and safety. This is the policy that was given to me “from above”. I am willing to surrender my “right” to a mask-less face in order to protect others. Deciding to rail against the rules and experience anger and rage at my lost rights is going to be a far greater threat to my mental and physical health than any increased carbon dioxide intake that I experience. I get to choose how I react, and this greatly changes the impact that the new normal will have on my health and well-being.
We will continue to experience changes as we face this “new normal”. We get to choose how these changes affect us. They will impact our actions and procedures, but they do not need to influence our mood, our outlook, or our hope for the future.