The Real World

I've been thinking lately- what makes things seem normal?

Consistency, complacency, comfort that leads to familiarity? We define and create every single thing that is around us and this is the first time in my life where I've seen a crack in the veneer. I see what we've shaped as unmovable, unadaptable, and incoherent. We are experiencing something as a people where globally and simultaneously we have the platform to visibly relate, to emotionally feel pain, and to share the same potential outcome.

What's strange is that it's always been this way. We have always been able to relate, to feel other's pain, and we most definitely all share the same potential outcomes, but somehow this is different. It is visible, it is not a ripple- it's a cascade. I watch videos on my phone of people speaking of things that I am experiencing in Italian, Spanish, and Mandarin. I see people on different continents that hold the same emotions and concerns for their family as I do. I see myself reflected. I see the unity.

What is so unmovable about our world? Especially now since we've stopped moving? At least in the sense of the greater population, we have moved into our homes, we wear masks, we have stopped the high rates of travel, and we have found ways of coping and of supporting. I've always been told that we have resiliency, but I've never felt it on the level quite like this. This has taught me something, something that feels more tangible that it ever seemed before. Change is always within our grasp. It just happens to feel more profound when we see it as we uniquely experience something globally at once.

This is not to dismiss the absolute tragedy of this situation. The lives lost, the consequential dismissals and mistakes, the daily lives impacted and the generations completely redefined. I've had a hard time trying to separate this tragedy from something I realized I've been yearning for all my life. A global response to human need. A global response of unity. A global response of connection and humanity. There is something about daily life, living in a bubble, and feeling so individually distinct that can make someone so lonely.

And not to say that this is not a lonely experience, but I have never felt closer to the world than I do now.

It is an experience that will completely redefine me.