I am delighted to have discovered something amid this sad event. I can hear spring. I can smell spring. I can move slowly and enjoy spring. After we address and eliminate as much as possible the human suffering that this crisis has brought us, I don’t want to ever go back to normal. Normal is what led us into this pandemic. Normal is to continue to destroy habitats and expose ourselves to zoonotic viruses. Normal is to justify this ecological suicide as economic growth. Normal is to have a grossly unequal distribution of the benefits of this growth. Why is it normal to have underpaid workers forced to work while sick in senior residences? Normal is having loud streets filled with vehicles, which are wider and longer than needed. Normal is having healthy able-bodied people use these oversized vehicles instead of a bicycle. Normal is a ridiculous amount of air travel, while underfunding health care and underfunding education, especially for indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups. Normal is survival of the selfish and the continued extinction event we are living. Normal would be to continue with a world built to be prone to future pandemics. I want us to reinvent a new Not Normal World.

May 21, 2020