Category: Covid-19 Reflections

“In Search of the Unicorn”

Living in a Time of Change

We are well into a moment of time when we are experiencing life as never anticipated or imagined. Working from anywhere other than home is seldom an option. No longer are we free to jump in the car and run a few errands without making detailed plans. We cannot meet up with our friends for a dinner out or stop for a glass of wine on our way home. There is no school as we came to know it. Worship takes place via Zoom. Entertainment is no longer as simple as buying a ticket and an overpriced bucket of popcorn. Have you noticed? Things have changed! And for a great majority of us…change is hard!

And when I am brutally honest with myself (and there are those rare moments!) I admit that I would rather “long for the good ‘ol days” than change. The way I often hear it expressed during the pandemic is in terms of “returning to normal” or arriving at a point where we can define and accept what “the new normal” will be. Sound familiar?

The Nonexistent “Normal”

Well…Newsflash…..”Normal” is a unicorn! It is imaginary! In Oxford’s terms, it is “…something that is highly desirable but difficult to find or obtain.”

Or, as Debra Jenkins put it: “There is absolutely no such thing as normal.  There is only one place in this whole world that you’re going to find normal, and that’s in your laundry room on the dial of your dryer because normal…it’s a dryer setting.” (TEDx Huntsville 9/25/2014).

So, if change is far too difficult for us, and “normal” is a myth, then what are we to do? Is despair the only alternative?

Though she may put it a bit more negatively than I would be willing to state it, poet and activist Sonya Renee Taylor speaks truth when she says,

We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all humanity and nature.”

We are all too willing to let the pundits and professionals determine for us what normal is and what the new normal will be. In their speculation we are looking to find a sense of reassurance and confidence.

Creating the Normal

But I believe that the answer lies in our commitment to embrace the future as perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity. To affirm that WE are the artists and architects of what will be “the new normal.”  WE are the tailors of the new garment called the future, and together WE create it, one stitch at a time. We must not allow others to determine for us what is our unique “normal” for what is normal is as distinct and different as we are. Our value lies not in the conformity to the “normal” that we share, but in the differences that make us unique. It is only then that normal becomes a unicorn of our own making.

“These are the Times…..”

“These are the times that try [our] souls”

– Thomas Paine

I doubt that he had envisioned COVID-19 when Thomas Payne penned these words in 1776, but as we scan our landscape with a 2020 perspective, we sense that this statement was and is quite prophetic. Our souls (along with our patience, creativity, endurance and hope!) are being tried. As a result our respective worlds have been turned upside down.
I have no great need to identify the many ways those worlds have been affected…nor do you. But to say that ours is a different world than the one given to us at the birth of the new year is an understatement! You can fill in the blanks…

Differences in Effect


I also know that there are those who are “tried” more than I. They are real. They are people of color. They are unemployed or unemployable. They are poor. They are sick, infected and yet untested. They are frail. They are the healthcare providers and first responders of every kind. They are “essential” service providers. They are teachers. They are young and dependent. They are old and equally as dependent. They are homeless, incarcerated, facing mental, emotional, spiritual and physical challenges. They are lonely. And the list goes on. You know that. So do I.
What is inconvenience to me may be life or death to another.
What may change in a week or a month or a year from now for me, may be a life sentence for another.
But even if there are others unnamed, they are not un-thought of. Our complex world has become very small… overnight! “THEY” are not the others…”THEY” are us. We do not act or even think alone, for our thoughts and actions affect those around us, be they in our own household or in countries we cannot identify or even name. We do not think or act alone, for our thoughts and actions have a direct effect on each other. It is not “Them”…it is “Us”

Summer Soldiers and Sunshine Patriots

Payne’s opening is followed by words less familiar but certain in their beauty and truth:


“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.


I confess my lack of objectivity. I am, by our country’s definition, among the most vulnerable:


I am a senior…seventy two years old
I have a pre-existing health condition…heart disease
I am immuno-compromised…my system cannot fight infection as effectively as many because I take medication due to an organ transplant
Many share this kind of vulnerability. But I hope that I give voice to a larger part of our world… not just the most vulnerable.


Today, in Payne’s terms, is not the day for the “summer soldier” or the “sunshine patriot”. It is a day when we put aside partisan politics and ego. It is a day when those around us must become the recipients of our greatest concern and highest good.
Open up!
Listen up!
Care!
Be safe!
…and be well!

Thom