For the past year and a half, as a society, we have been pretending that the pandemic never happened. It makes perfect sense. We NEEDED to. After a couple of difficult, surreal years, we just needed to feel everything is normal again. And so we did.
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I apprehensively shared this observation with a couple of friends that are still impacted by the pandemic, people whose daily experience is far from normal, and may never be the same. I was somewhat surprised that they agreed emphatically. In their experience, too, we all pretend the pandemic never happened.
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In fact, I trust that many of us are still deeply impacted by what happened. Still, when we come together, we pretend otherwise.
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The only problem is the pandemic did happen. The world economy screeched to a halt. We got to clearly see how people, organizations and systems showed up for us - and didn’t - in times of unprecedented crisis. We came together in new ways, we came apart in bewildering ways. Our children spent formative years in isolation. We lost, and are still losing lives, many to the corona virus, many others to the new reality it ushered in.
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We cannot and will not for many years fully understand the impact of the pandemic. However, one thing is certain. It did happen and whether or not we recognize it, a new reality is setting in.
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These days, we are commemorating another very different yet very intense trauma that significantly changed our experience of reality. Unlike the pandemic, this trauma was sudden, concretely time-bound, and immediately evident. Even 22 years later, we do not fully grasp the impact of 9/11.
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I lived on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at that time. New York abruptly changed. What stood out in my experience, is that everywhere people were looking each other in the eyes. In an aisle at the deli, walking on the street, sitting across from each other in the subway, people, almost invisible to each other before, were looking for and finding the eyes of strangers. In countless encounters without words, we engaged in processing, together and individually, what just happened.
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Grasping for a sense of normalcy following the pandemic is normal. Making believe it did not just happen is, in some ways, essential for our reemergence. Forgetting is, at times, an act of self-care.
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A new reality is setting in regardless. The choice is ours, together and individually. Are we going to let it just happen to us? Or will we look each other in the eyes to process and shape this new reality?
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Reply with your thoughts. I read and respond to every email.
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​Photo by Tim Mossholder​

Ethics.Coach helps purpose-driven business leaders usher in and proactively shape the new reality, building clarity, confidence, community, and cash for making positive and lasting societal impact.