Stop Waiting for Things to Go ‘Back to Normal’
As history tells us, there’s no such thing
We’ve all heard it at some point this year, and have probably even said it: “When things go back to normal… ”
I found myself having such a thought this very morning as I took my sons for our daily walk. It’s understandable, of course. Life right now feels very strange. A pandemic has disrupted our lives. The country seems more polarized than ever. There’s little sign that the economy will rebound soon.
But any student of history knows that 2020 is hardly abnormal.
A hundred years ago, we had a pandemic — the Spanish flu — in the middle of a world war. We had the Great Depression after that. Then there was another flu pandemic in the ’50s. The late ’60s saw widespread protests and riots over Vietnam plus another flu pandemic, which killed some 100,000 people in the United States and over a million across the globe. The new millennium began with a terrorist attack that killed almost 3,000.
I challenge you to find a single “normal” decade in American history.
In fact, ancient traditions emphasized precisely this idea. The Stoics were fond of quoting the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “The only constant is change.” The Bible put it slightly differently: “That which…
