COMMENT Is anyone else getting a serious case of “new normal” fatigue? It is not a phrase I came across much pre-pandemic. And why would I? Back in the footloose days of Brexit and intense political squabbling there wasn’t much call for it. Now I can barely get through a day without hearing it.
What is frustrating is how often this now much-uttered phrase is being used in the wrong context. To be clear, the new normal is not the situation we are all living through now. There is nothing normal about swathes of the global workforce being separated from their teams and colleagues for up to, and in some cases over, a year. There is nothing normal about having to wave to elderly relatives through windows. There is nothing normal about spending months on end looking at the same four walls. And there is definitely nothing normal about weighing up whether or not we deem it safe enough to break free from some of these confines when we are technically allowed to do so but have all been made aware of the risks.
As we tentatively return to an open-air meeting or socially distanced coffee, it is becoming even more obvious just how far from normal our lives have been for the past four months. We are social animals with an intrinsic need for more out of our days than a computer screen on the kitchen table.
