You Can't Get Back to Normal - A COVID-19 Parable

For somewhere around a year now, people have been asking: “When do you think we will get back to normal?” While I am sure there have been lots of people asking that question, the ones that I have any direct experience of doing so are journalists/reporters. The question comes up in many contexts, but it is the same question with the same thought concept behind it: When will the world be like it was before the pandemic?

Surprisingly at one level, and not surprising at all at another, the answer ought to be both simple and obvious. To keep you from what I hope is not anything like suspense, the answer is: Never. We will never get back to normal. This of course is not what anyone wants to hear, certainly not the journalists. And of course, it does and doesn’t answer the question because both the question and the answer are examples of a bad communication process. Thus, the parable.

When engaged in a communication process there are some requirements that just have to be understood. The “When” question is starting a conversation, but it is doing so without meeting the necessary requirements to do so successfully. The following mimics a song I heard decades ago but it provided the inspiration for my sad parable. If you are interest in the lyrics look up a song by Bob Gibson, titled: To Morrow. But back to the question of “When we will get back to normal?”  As you read the parable, it should become self-evident what the problem with the “When” question is.

 

“Getting Back To Normal”

By T. M. Bauer

 

It’s been a year or so I think, like for everyone,
since things have been near or close to normal.
When meeting a neighbor outside not to be out done,
we remain safely distanced as that is now what’s formal.

Even on calls with friends or family, someone is sure to ask
When do you think that it is that we will get back to normal?
It happened yet again today, and I just muttered in my mask,
This must stop. So I decided then and there I’d be abnormal.

You know, I said, that’s hard to say, when we will be back.
I don’t believe that you or I has been there less I’m a fool.
So getting back to Normal would be quite difficult in fact.
Perhaps to get to Normal we would have to go to a school.

They’d insist we would get back to normal once this virus goes away.
And in reply it seemed to me I’d have to take a stance.
Are you planning to move or just to visit Normal on that day?
It was clear to me the tune had forced us all into a semantic dance.

Which Normal are you going to then? I would ask as if confused.
They shrugged, looked at me. We don’t really know, we aren’t exactly sure.
But after so long, it will be nice to get back to normal, we’re enthused.
I am not going to Normal. I’m staying here at home. But tell a bit more.

Which Normal are you going to? Is it to Alabama or Illinois you go?
They stared at me in disbelief. No! No! We are staying here.
I cannot see how you will get back if you do not go, and so,
It is not normal to not go to Normal if you want to be back there.             

The parable, as poor as it was, hopefully made its point: It is important in a conversation (communication) to be talking about the same thing and sharing a common frame of reference. The question of “When” presumes that the concept of “normal” is understood in common but this is clearly not the case. Some people when answering even indicate in their response that “well, we will never actually get back to the way it was” and then proceed to give some time in which we will no longer be in the current situation.

I hate to say this, but we are never in the current situation after some period of time elapses. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus gave his perspective on this: “You can never step into the same river twice.” Returning to “normal” will thus require at least a brief discussion of what “normal” means. But it should be understood from the beginning that “normal” will be a different river from the one we had been in before; just as it should be.