I read an article today titled “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting” — it’s worth a read and worth a think.
The word “normal” is getting thrown around a lot. That this is our “new normal” or that we want things to “get back to normal”. There are layers (global ones) to unpack, but for now, I feel this on a personal level. And the longer I am on a pause the less I’m sure I want to go back to how it was before. I don’t know exactly what that means for me yet — I certainly wouldn’t call this time a spiritual retreat where I’m getting clarity and getting shit done — but it is something. Even in my own language, I can see how it would be so easy to erase whatever meaning is going to come out of this by glazing over that it happened.
This is a half-formed thought but I guess I’m worried I could contribute to the gaslighting this article warns us about.
Here’s one powerful section from the piece:
“What is about to be unleashed on American society will be the greatest campaign ever created to get you to feel normal again. It will come from brands, it will come from government, it will even come from each other, and it will come from the left and from the right. We will do anything, spend anything, believe anything, just so we can take away how horribly uncomfortable all of this feels. And on top of that, just to turn the screw that much more, will be the one effort that’s even greater: the all-out blitz to make you believe you never saw what you saw. The air wasn’t really cleaner; those images were fake. The hospitals weren’t really a war zone; those stories were hyperbole. The numbers were not that high; the press is lying. You didn’t see people in masks standing in the rain risking their lives to vote. Not in America. You didn’t see the leader of the free world push an unproven miracle drug like a late-night infomercial salesman. That was a crisis update. You didn’t see homeless people dead on the street. You didn’t see inequality. You didn’t see indifference. You didn’t see utter failure of leadership and systems.”
As much as I want us to heal and travel and be able to hug one another again, I’m not sure I can imagine slipping back into normal right now. And though I don’t want to stay in this limbo state of low key collective trauma, I don’t want to be unchanged at the other end of it. I don’t want our country to be unchanged. We all deserve better from our systems and from one another. And maybe we deserve better from ourselves too. I’m just not sure what that means yet.
With Love,
Natalie