By: Nicole Magas, Opinions Editor
It’s week nine of lockdown in Canada; longer for those of us who took precautions earlier to safeguard ourselves or the vulnerable people we love. Restlessness has set in for some, resignation for others. As SFU students begin summer semester classes, the return to school is either going to be a torture or a much anticipated return to routine.
It seems the longer we sit in quarantine, the more one word is spoken almost as much as COVID-19 itself: normal. There have been calls to get the economy back to working as “normal,” speculation on what the “new normal” will be, even wistful comments on when things might return to “normal” — before COVID-19 was such a deep, terrifying part of our lives.
The problem with “normal” is that it idealizes our thinking about the world. In much the same way that some people nostalgically look back on “simpler times,” the idea of returning to a “normal” existence makes us underestimate just how ugly and terrible certain parts of that existence were.
A “normal economy,” for example, means 500,000 people living in poverty in British Columbia alone. In West Vancouver on April 22, a vacant lot sold for just over $1 million, and instead of questioning why an unused plot of land sold for such an obscene amount of money in an era when many Vancouver residents can’t find affordable rent, the headlines screamed about how it sold for nearly half a million less than asking price.
Now that we’re all forced to stop the frantic buzz of activities that usually occupy our minds from day to day, it’s worth taking this time to reflect on whether or not this is the “normal” we want to return to.
To be sure, the advance of COVID-19 through our communities and the terrible toll it has taken in terms of loss of life, loss of health, and loss of economic security is miles away from an ideal situation. However, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to feel nostalgic for another less-than-ideal situation, just because it’s not as bad as the one we’re in right now.
If anything, the COVID-19 crisis has shown us the ways in which our “normal” system is cracked and flawed. Service industry employees, nurses, and janitorial staff have become overnight heroes keeping us fed, keeping us healthy, and keeping our spaces sanitized. And while we’ve been gracious enough to consider things like hazard pay and wage increases for these folks, it’s worth keeping in mind that “normal” for these workers in the not-so-distant past meant unbelievably long hours, poverty wages, and a supreme lack of appreciation.
Once the pandemic subsides, these frontline workers we are currently praising aren’t going to be any less essential than they are now. It’s absurd to want to go back to the way things were, as if we can just forget how eye-opening these past few months have been.
Instead of gazing out the window, longing for the world to go back to the way it used to be, we should be considering the ways in which we will need to pressure our leaders to make the world better when this is all over. Returning to “normal” is not an option. We’ve seen the cracks in the foundation now, and it’s imperative that we don’t continue to build our society on unstable ground.
