Baseline

I bought a plane ticket.

Somehow, amid the vast array of normalities I wish to not have lost touch with, I thought buying plane tickets would not make its way there. Yet it felt surreal to make plans, that usual rush of excitement about going somewhere replaced by a hollow of uncertainty in my chest.

It is a happy trip. I am planning to see my family, maybe my friends if the situation allows some safety, and yet... Yet.

Despite my unnerving positivity and deep faith that normality will be normal again one day, it feels so hard to shake off the feeling that some things will never be the same anymore. Not because they will be life-threatening and dangerous as they are now, but because we will have changed so much that we cannot go back. Some deep entrenched notions of what life is seem to have changed for good, or is it just dread? A fear to never leave this weird social arrangement we adjusted to.

Some countries are far more advanced in vaccination now, starting to reopen and reconnect with life as it was. Makes me wonder. If they are back to what they used to do before, are they doing stuff the same way? We say the world changes all the time, but in truth what changes is the people. We change. The world adapts.

And now we are more self-aware, more frightened. It has been a hell of a collective disruption and we are not expected to move on as nothing had happened. After big wars and catastrophes, everything shifts. Life-altering events, that is what we call them. The ones who have been through it pass the story on, and who they are at their core is forever changed. War survivors come back to rebuild the world after the dust settles, carrying their learnings and stories with them.

The normal shifts. History proves so.

We are mid-shifting now. Buckle up.

-Maíra