The ultimate act of subversion

Normal is whatever we are prepared to put up with, and whatever we are prepared to put up with becomes normal. I’ve witnessed a lot of stuff this week that strikes me as being symptomatic of a new normal, one existing on the surface of an anger that’s coming to the boil. I’ve witnessed bad tempered exchanges between usually placid individuals, I’ve received emails in SHOUTY CAPITALS. I’ve also been expected to laugh at racist jokes, and to share in racist opinions.

My resistance to all of this has been to meet grumpiness with calm. I respond to shouty capitals by not responding at all. As for the racist jokes, I do not laugh at them. But as a strategy, I fear such mechanisms are as effective as hiding my head in the sand. I can pretend all I like, but the world is still out there, and its normality is morphing in ways that disturb me.

To make matters worse, I’ve been accused of grumpiness myself. Perhaps it’s true. I excuse it by claiming the reason is I’m witnessing an eclipse of the sun by a giant, black, angry balloon pumped up by all this hot air spouting from a million snarling mouths. It’s not normal, this thing, and I want to resist it, because only by our collective acquiescence can it ever become established as the New Normal. If I am negative it is out of desperation, searching for the pin that will burst this vile bubble, and restore daylight to the world.

To push the metaphor a little further, the greater the eclipse, the harder it is to see the decay, in the same way candlelight will hide the dust and mould of the most toxic environment, render it normal, even cosy until it makes us ill. Daylight reveals the world as it is, reveals it lately as disturbing – disturbing also we risk no longer being disturbed by it, that we are so easily habituated, normalised to this thing, this tide in the Zeitgeist that is definitely not normal.

Contrary to all of this, contemporary spiritual belief speaks of an imminent awakening, a blossoming of consciousness, likening it to the exponential rate of change of technological development, at present bewildering and exploding wonders on a daily basis. Yes, our flowering is imminent, the gurus tell us, even though all evidence is pointing the other way, that we are returning to a state of unconsciousness, one our technology is aiding and abetting, as much as it is resisting.

I read back over my stuff and wonder if I’m all right, if I’ve simply grown too old to be of use any more, or if I’ve been crawling about on the plain for too long and need to haul my bones up a hill, gain some fresh perspective and some real oxygen, rather than hyperventilating on this synthetic stuff we’re all breathing now via online media. Maybe that’s it – only the dead-zones provide us with anything approaching the real normal any more, places where the Internet struggles and 4G is but a distant dream.

I know of a few places like that, lost valleys, remote bays, high passes. Perhaps I should flee there and become celibate, in the literary sense I mean, shield my flame in the privacy of private journals, instead of standing out in the rain and wind all the time. Let me remind myself Normal is the sigh of the wind in the trees, the sparkle of sunlight on water, the sound of birds and the scent of the wild. Everything else, the good and the bad of it, is just the stuff we make up in our heads, reflective of all the ups and downs of the psyche.

If I am grumpy then, it’s because I do not accept any other normality as genuine, and reject it as unwholesome. Grumpiness feels like a pin to burst the balloon, but it’s not. It only adds to the pain of the world, just as every frown aids the eclipse, hastens the transition to the new, darker normality. I know, it’s just easier, when surrounded by frowny-faces to forget how to smile, how, when met with grumpiness, to respond with an even temper, and how when met with bigotry and racism, to call it out for what it is. This, this is the pin to burst the balloon, and we all posses it.

So breathe, relax, smile. At times like these, it is the opposite of what’s expected. It is the ultimate act of subversion.

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