This is Not Normal

When Living Through Exceptional Times it's Important to Maintain Perspective

1921 Roamer Advertisement The Automobile Magazine (with edits by writer) PUBLIC DOMAIN WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Hello, Friend,

When I was in college I had a second hand Toyota Corolla. It was a good little car, easy to drive and manage. My first car was an Oldsmobile Delta 88, which was basically a land yacht. Safe, yes, manageable, not as much. The smaller car was a vast improvement. It got me to work, school, and out and about the Atlanta ‘burbs where driving feels like a combat sport. I wasn’t what you might call car savvy. When my brakes started to fade, I didn’t notice. It takes time for brakes to fail. I just kept making sub-conscious micro-adjustments. One early morning as I was driving out of my then boyfriend’s neighborhood going down a hill towards an intersection, the brakes gave out. That feeling of pressing the brake pedal down to the car floor and nothing happening was terrifying. All I could do was hope no one hit me and the car would stop after it rolled across the intersection at the bottom of the hill. Thankfully, it did. Disaster averted.

I think about those brakes from time to time and how as humans we’re able to adjust to all manner of degradations in our day to day lives. I feel like America is a car with the brakes fading, and we’re all making micro-adjustments to get through. There are upsides to this, of course, because it’s impossible to do much of anything if we’re in a state of constant shock, outrage, and sadness. Adjusting is a primal brain survival skill. It can also be a slippery slope. As we adjust again and again to the devolution of our reality, we start to lose touch with our emotional core. We forget what life was like before. That is how atrocities are committed and people don’t react. They’ve adjusted. They’ve acquiesced. They’ve forgotten. They’re stuck in survival mode and it makes them less aware of other people and less inclined towards compassion.

If we lose our capacity for compassion, we lose our humanity.

This is not normal.

Just because some people have acquiesced, even gleefully participated, in ushering chaos back into our day to day lives, that doesn’t make it acceptable or compatible with any sort of reasonable existence. What is happening in America at this moment is so outside of our modern normal, it is almost cartoonishly abnormal. I say almost, because although we can and should allow ourselves to laugh to release some of the anxiety we’re carrying, it’s important to remember that laughing at it is not a sanctioning of it. It doesn’t diminish the gravity of the situation. These may be ridiculously incompetent people, but they’re also seriously dangerous people. Their ineptitude is almost as problematic as their lack of empathy. They’re careless because they don’t care about anyone or anything other than their own immediate desires and needs. They don’t care if they break things. They appear to enjoy breaking things. They don’t care if their carelessness results in catastrophic implications for people or the environment or the future of the planet.

Oh well, too bad.

Tee hee.

This is not normal. This is not acceptable. This is not sustainable.

Time for a check-up! It’s important to stay aware of the micro-adjustments we’re making and their deeper implications. We can’t remain in a state of constant outrage with our feet pressing on the brakes. We can’t glide along on auto pilot ignoring the seriousness of the moment in which we’re living. We need balance. Finding that takes conscious effort. When living through exceptional times it’s crucial to maintain awareness, perspective, and, most importantly, our humanity.

Without these things we’re careening down a hill towards an intersection with no brakes and that is terrifying.

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