Reflections 23rd April

Leaving Home. Reflections on "normal".

I find the times we are in unsettling. Not frightening or threatening, just unsettling in the way that looking at a familiar scene through a distorting lens is unsettling. Seeing things differently, noticing the unfamiliar that is always there, and finding the familiar obscured. A sense of disorientation and temporary disillusion.

The props that both politicians and businesses had available to mask a deeper malaise - Brexit, the Pandemic, and War in Europe have become wearisomely familiar, and the lack of capability, competence and vision is clear. We left an old normal and have come back to a version of uncanny valley - something we think should be real but that we know isn’t without being sure why.

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

We left “normal” …