Discussion: Moving to the New Normal
November 6, 2020
Today was the day I packed for my move to the New Normal. Looking at my “to do list”, I first started unpacking things I had in storage for years. When I made my move to where I’m now I discovered things which I had never unpacked. With this current move, I packed only the things I required. Mostly my storage comprising of memories or things I had tried and never picked up again. Once my storage cleared out, I thought the packing would be easy. Constantly hearing of the New Normal in the media and observing changes taking place around me. I had to establish what I needed to carry with me into this alternative way of life.
At the same moment, I paused and looked around realizing the “Past Normal” hadn’t worked well enough for the masses. The brief time we’ve been in the New Normal I felt we can admittedly proclaim that so far it isn’t working either. The unemployment plight of households; homeless still crowding the city streets and the problem of economic insecurity causing foreclosures and repossessions. Businesses big and small are being forced to close their doors with no plans of recovery. There are many whose businesses were to be family legacies only find out they are now gone. Crime has escalated. Many of our politicians are yet battling to maintain their place in the political arena. Mostly to fulfill their personal agenda with no loyalty to the ones they pledged to serve. Outside of this what has changed? Unquestionably, are we just changing a label on a familiar package? As a people many were constantly wearing a mask. Only now we can see the mask visibly.
So, did it take a world crisis to transform our language or mindset to what we deem The New Normal? People make up the world and what manifests in it is because of our actions or inaction. The world turns into the people who occupy it. There are people striving to get ahead, countless struggles to just keep what they have, while others have given up trying.
As much as I wish to argue that the Earth in its basic form is a living organism… alive. I can’t even qualify myself to be proficient at this argument, even though it’s still in me. I point to the growing trees, plants and flowers that man didn’t plant. We have oceans and living mammals in the waters and dry land mammals and many still debate how this came into existence.
In 2016, I wrote a paper entitled “Are we preparing now for a world that will not exist in the future”? In this paper I proposed the following questions: Did the homeless prepare for their homeliness? What happens from birth, through years of school, jobs and careers that one finds them self on the street. Many falling asleep in alleys and standing in a food line waiting for a bowl of soup? The divorce after twenty-four years of marriage and four children, the empty nest is not only the children now grown and gone, but the spouse has also left. Yet, preparation is needed and now how we prepare is important.
I wish I could give you the answers; however, I would prefer to make the following recommendations.
When you plant apple seeds, an apple tree will grow with many apples on the tree.
Whatever you sow in life may be one act but multiplied back to you as a tree (in abundance… good or
evil). Be careful what you plant. A question to ask yourself, “What is my motive regarding this action?”
… (this seed I am planting).
Stop judging people because you are looking at the exterior demonstration of their inner pain being revealed.
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his/her shoes. You can’t feel his/her experiences, fight
through his/her challenges and you can’t judge someone's pain by saying, “I went
through the same thing, (concluding) I know how it feels.” You will never know their pain,
the same as no one will thoroughly know your pain.
He just need to pick himself up by his own bootstraps.
Dr. Martin Luther King stated, “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own
bootstraps, but it is cruel just to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself
by his own bootstraps.” Because you could manage it, the next man may not be capable.
And will call for a hand to help him up and it might be your hand he is reaching for.
Hurt people, hurt people is a genuine statement of life.
The hurts and pains you bear within are being released to the one (s) (most likely) close to you that
didn’t induce those pains. Now you are inflicting their anguish (with your pain)
on to someone else. Hence all the above statements focus on one act we have within our power.
Forgiveness…
Forgiveness doesn’t release the other person, it releases you.
Forgiveness enables you to view the world through fresh eyes and a different heart.
Remember undoubtedly there is someone you need to forgive you… we all do.
Preparation for my move to the New Normal will settle on these foundations. Things may not be precisely as I look forward to, but will have some resemblance to what I can peacefully enjoy in my life.
Thank you for joining me for Friday at Sundown. Remember… Just Breathe!
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