The New Normal? (Part 1)

by Dr. John Recine

Have you ever noticed that each day there is a little something different about the world?

The route you take to work is blocked by a traffic incident; you can't find that new jacket or the old one you always wear. These are minor shifts in your normal inconveniences that you cope with on a daily basis and no big deal just minor shifts in your universe.

With each so small and inconsequential, you hardly notice them much less remember them as you carry on with your day. Temporary distractions from your normal are one thing, but what happens if your travel route is altered on more permanent basis and you have to find a new way to work school or where ever you go in the morning for the next month or more due to road construction or bridge repair?

A bit more annoying (as we are creatures of habit and resist change unless it is forced upon us) our universe changes. Not necessarily for the better or worse it's just different. It could be that for part of the day coming and going; we have a new normal, new traffic patterns.

A new landscape means a new environment to deal with, hence a new normal.

Actually we deal with a new normal on a daily basis but it is slow and unnoticed. It is a gradual change in our physiology - we move at 25 like we did at 5 years old but we don't run as much at 55 as we did at 25 and we don't dance at 75 like we did at 55.

The aging process is a chronic process of change that is hardly noticeable until we find that we can't climb fences, jump across streams. And what I did all night as a young man now takes me all night to do as an older man. Slow unrecognized changes over time create a new normal.

We just pass it off in some trite remark like "it beats the alternative" meaning death. As much as we could hope for getting younger, more agile and able - that alternative is never a possibility.

What happens if the normal changed from running the mile today changed to a wheel chair by tonight. Certainly one would notice that abrupt change, notice the change but totally unprepared for what is now the new normal.

When you have 80 years to prepare for that slowdown and lack of ability you have time to prepare for it but when you have 80 minutes between running and never walking again, there is no time to prepare, you just are.

That wheel chair becomes your new normal. On a personal level its tragically devastating; on a family level it's just plain awful. On a neighbor level it's sad, on a neighborhood level it's a tough break and on the evening news its nonexistent.

What affects you personally usually has no impact on the rest of the world. Others are operating in their old daily routine normal while you suffer to grasp the new normal or maybe not!

What would happen if a water main broke and flooded all of the homes on your block? Your neighborhood now has a new normal - the recovery, the clean up and dealing with a different living space. Comfort is a function of familiarity and abrupt change in familiarity creates discomfort.

Let's take that same inconvenience that you and your neighbors are dealing with and expand it to Katrina level where the entire city is under water. There was no place to go, no food to be had and no water to drink; there was nothing but scattered roof tops in a sea of brown water.

I'll tell you more about it next week in Survival Basics.

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About the Author: John Recine

John holds a PhD in Safety and Loss Control and holds professional certifications from numerous national and internationally recognized professional organizations. John has worked in the safety and health profession for more than 35 years.

During which he has been involved with Disaster Planning, Fire Fighting industrial chemical fires, accident prevention initiatives and accident investigations, forensic analysis on site, and national disaster recovery efforts working with the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans post Katrina and Katrina recovery efforts.

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