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Signs of a Different Time
If I may begin to reflect (which I do every week), I’ve just been sitting around with the fact that things are significantly going to change in the next month. Vaccine rollouts for all adults have started in most states, cities are bustling back like usual, and maybe I’ll be in a classroom in the fall. It just seems like things may genuinely be heading closer to “normal.”
But that instinct and feeling to return to what we would consider being “normal” are unsettling to me. And this sentiment that’s only been growing in my mind since we got sent home over a year ago has only risen higher. After over half a million people here have died, after millions went and may still be unemployed, the initial gut instinct of just returning back to some world where we all just didn’t experience a pandemic just will never sit right.
I think about when I didn’t wipe down my groceries or just went through life opening doors without pulling the sleeve of my hoodie down or sanitizing my hands immediately after. I think about what it meant for me to just bustle through downtown Chicago, packed within crowds and taking the L to see a concert. And in every single one of those brief moments, I still don’t think I can fathom how we must just immediately snap out of all our habits and embrace the world again.
