Changes

If you watch TV, the kind with commericals not streaming, you start to see the trends in our society. 

 It feels like things are changing. Seems like we are headed toward going back to work soon and having gatherings. The whole lifestyle change due to a pandemic seems to be easing up. Ads on TV show women putting jeans back on to go in to work. And they show hundreds of ways to lose the weight many of us put on over the last year. 

Like an underwatered plant given water again, I doubt things will be the same. Some people will probably forever be more careful, scarred by all the deaths of friends and family. They will wear masks longer and stand farther apart than before. A sneeze will get you the stinkeye. Life in person feels like it is chaotic. 

Going back to work means only seeing half the people we saw before, as some will work from home most of the time if not all of the time. Or have left the job altogether. Or retired early. Or worse. 

People tend to want to go back to exactly how life was before, but life changes not only circumstances but it changes them as well.  They find that it's not really possible. Others have changed too.We can't unlive this pandemic. We can't forget how it felt to be in a world where things were suddenly unavailable, out of stock, doors closed, people close to us get sick or even die. 

Even as toilet paper comes back on the shelves, and windex can again be used to clean, even as yeast is back in the stores and bakeries are once again open, even as the one way stickers on the grocery store floors are removed, even as hospitals are no longer in danger of having no beds, the memories remain. 

And so will a feeling of having learned new rules, and then having those rules removed, bit by bit. Change in any direction is a shock. You don't trust that it's okay.  You feel this as you walk into a business with no mask on and the hair stands up on your arms. 

The battles fought and won or lost over social media estranged lifelong friends and family members. Hiding behind a computer became the norm as the doors shut. Mistrust was the common thread on both sides of the political battlefield and muckraking came back in style. Undoing all those feelings may not be possible. Not to mention the world problems brought to light more often. 

Amidst all this turmoil of trying to go back to normal, we are meant to go back to some semblance of "the way we used to be". 

I think of all this as I sit through ads for hair dye, weight loss, acid peels, new jeans, and makeup, I can't help but wonder how tenuous the grasp on us still is. How many of us have just gone grey or grew out your beards?

 Are you going back or will you remain the new you as you walk into the office? Does it mean for you that when you "go back to work" that you will lose the weight, dye and cut the hair, put make up on again, trim the beard, wear dressier clothes? Or will jeans instead of khaki's be enough now? 

Will you give more to charity or spend your time helping others more once that's possible?

As for me, I think the new normal will need to include spending time with friends and family, making new friends as I try new things. I think I will need to lose the weight - it would bother me too much not to, but i wont be as desperate to do it quickly like i was before. I will once again seek out and cook/bake my way through understanding food cultures. 

I can see myself doing things for charity but maybe do something new and get out of doing the same things day after day. I miss the variety. 

When I'm writing a blog, I like to try to tie it up in a neat bow for you by the end. But I think I'm going to leave this one open-ended this time. Life just seems to be that way lately. I don't have the answers. And even if I did, they would be my answers, not yours. 

I only seek to bring up what it feels like today, 513 days after the WHO announced cases of this virus in China. And maybe give you some things to think about. 

Vicky