The world has transformed in the past year. That much is obvious. We are in the middle of a global pandemic, for one. Or is it the beginning? The end? No one really knows, and so we’ve graduated from talking about when things go back to normal and we simply refer to now as the new normal. And the new normal is a world of a masks, social distancing, and family reunions held over Zoom.
It’s not only the catastrophic coronavirus that has changed our world. To be fair, the pandemic has taken lives. It has taken jobs, safety, and health from many of us. It has placed health care workers in impossibly grave and defeating situations day in and day out. For those of us who are lucky, it has pushed our boundaries of comfort by forcing us to work from home and educate our children virtually and give up having happy hour at a bar.
But while the pandemic rages on, always there, other things have happened too. There have been riots and protests. There has been an unveiling of closet racism. Oregon was on fire for a while. There has been political unrest which has simmered for four years, reaching a boiling point of overflow with no one to turn off the burner. All these things have polarized people in astonishing ways.
However, this is not a political post, not really. I could write about my thoughts, what I believe in, why I picked the side I picked, what my fundamental values are. And half of the people reading it would agree with me, unequivocally. The other half would cry out that I’m wrong, and tell me exactly why. This, too, is part of the new normal, the landscape we traverse each time we set foot out the door. No one is leaning left or right, we are running straight in opposite directions, and further away from each other.
Not so very long ago, when the world was still normal, my kids and I had the good fortune to meet a friend of a friend who worked in Washington D.C. Although this man and his family would also become our friends, on that day we were simply out-of-state relatives visiting his neighbors. My ever-inquisitive son showed an interest in this man’s political career and fired question after question at him. An hour later, this man was offering to take him and his cousins to the Capitol building.
What followed was a relatively special day, for any kid I suppose. This wasn’t the tour of bus groups and ninth grade field trips. No, this was a private Sunday morning VIP expedition. My son was able to see where politicians meet and stand on the speaker’s balcony overlooking the National Mall. I saw the excitement on his face, frozen in time on cell phone pictures taken by the police officer who guided them. This officer took time out of his day to indulge, to let them into the privileged spaces, and—I can only imagine—answer many of my son’s questions.
After January 6, 2021, I have come to realize how explicitly valuable this experience was. It will be an exceedingly long time—if ever—before a tour like this will be possible again. The new normal now includes a world where federal buildings can and will be breached and politicians must pass through metal detectors to go to work. Little boys with an interest in democracy and politics will never have the chance to be given a VIP tour.
The new normal is a world where we walk around with masks on (or not, expressing freedom to some and outrage to others.) It is a world where the things we once just did—attending youth sports, going to concerts, having parties, conglomerating in large groups—don’t happen anymore. I can see my friends in healthcare grinding to a halt under this burden, their spirits distraught. I see my extrovert friends, withered and depressed as we sit in our houses and FaceTime instead of meeting at a restaurant like we used to. I see businesses closing and public education floundering. Mostly, I see a wild division of people, each rapidly defending their side, whether it has to do with Covid-19, masks, Donald Trump, or climate change. There is no common good anymore. Everyone claims they are right and blame rages hard. Hatred brews strongly.
Yet we all say we want to return to normal. How is that even possible anymore? I did believe, prior to January 6, 2021, that someday down the road we would have weathered the storm of Covid-19. I believed the political unease would have worked itself out and 2020 would be but a memory and a lesson. I felt that somewhere along that journey, we would realize, as human beings, that we are all connected. That wishing good for yourself when it means bad for others is morally incorrect and everyone would understand that.
After January 6, 2021, I no longer believe that. I am not certain what is more shocking: was it the world watching how easy it was to attack our nation’s capital or the fact that it was happening at all? Was it the tepid response of people who claimed, well so what this has been happening all summer with BLM riots? Was it the inability to see the frightening audio-visual definition of white privilege as white people scaled federal buildings to interrupt democracy?
And what do we teach our kids about this? What do I tell my son, who is a white male, who was born into a comfortable lifestyle that will allow him to skip over leaps and bounds of hurdles? Do we talk about democracy, and how rioting, looting and violence are wrong? Do we discuss the jarring image of a confederate flag waving inside the White House? How do I get him to understand that while the things that are happening are not directly affecting him, they do matter? How do I teach him to grow up and not turn his head from injustice and racism and lack of morality…just because he will be able to?
I think the answer lies in kindness, as unbelievably cliché as that sounds. I mean, we’ve tried everything else. I think it lies in an understanding that we are all connected, no matter how you live your life, no matter who you voted for. To follow the adage that we are all in the same storm, even if our boats are different. To wholeheartedly want change for those who are oppressed, even if you can’t understand what that feels like. To understand how fundamentally important that is. To believe that even if you feel like nothing you do makes a difference—it does.
I was reminded of this yesterday, when my friend sent me a picture of my son on the speaker’s balcony in October of 2019, not so long before new normal came to be. The reaction I had was strong, a deep sadness that came in the manner that it comes when you realize that someone who has died isn’t coming back. That freedom, that ease…that is not coming back. I remembered how thoughtful it was of this man to take my son there, and how kind it was of the officer on duty to grant them a tour.
But my friend had another reason for sending me this picture.
“I wanted to let you know something,” he said. He continued, telling me that the officer who took this picture of us is the one who was killed in the attack last week. The man who died a true American hero, defending democracy, is the same one who helped make a now once-in-a-lifetime experience possible for my son.
I told my son about this, and we talked about how strange it was that just a short time later the possibility of such a tour would be non-existent. About how lucky he was to have had that experience, and how that officer could never have guessed the role he was about to play in American history. How on that day, he was just doing his job and indulging in a friend and some kids, unknowingly giving one of them a once-in-a-lifetime experience. He didn’t do this for political reasons, or to prove a point, or to cast blame, or to defend his side. It was a simple act of kindness.
A reminder, however grave, that we are all connected, even in the smallest of ways.
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