A New Normal?

I watch many TED talks on Youtube. Every once in a while, one of them really touches me.  Today I watched “The Hidden Power of Smiling” by Ron Gutman, and was saddened to my very core.  Here is the link if you want to watch:  

 https://youtu.be/U9cGdRNMdQQ

Yesterday I was in the grocery store, where everyone was wearing a mask (of course. It is the rule during COVID-19). We have been in this mask thing for months, so why it bothered me so much yesterday, I can’t tell you.

So, just as an experiment, I walked every aisle, and everyone I encountered did NOT make eye contact with me. Not one.

I walked back to the produce aisle, again walking every aisle, and everyone I passed I said, “Excuse me” to make them look at me, and I smiled at him or her from behind my mask. Sadly, I couldn’t tell whether they knew I smiled, or whether they smiled back at me. By the time I got back to the lettuce, I felt like we were all ‘droids, moving about the store mechanically and isolated. It felt like I was in a science fiction horror movie.

Smiling is one of the most powerful ways we connect to other people. And the TED talk tells us that smiling is both universal and might be one of the keys to longevity. Those two facts alone seem to doom us now. 

Today, at virtual church, my pastor indicated that once COVID-19 is over, we will never go back to the “old normal”. While I do realize the underlying meaning of the sermon was that COVID has spawned an awareness of social issues that she hopes will be part of our “new normal”, I thought about a new normal being masks and social distancing, with no smiles, frowning under the masks because of injustices, not to mention the fact that so many pictures I’ve seen on social media are of masked people, where only the people in the picture know who they are. I hope they are smiling under those masks, whoever they are.

Last month, I got my annual eye exam for new glasses.  The optician left the room while I removed my mask and tried on frames. When I had narrowed the available frames down to 2, I called the optician, and wanting another opinion, asked him to let me back up to the door, hold my breath, take off my mask and try on the frames. That worked, and he told me which frames looked better on my face from across the room.

I realized later that, actually, nobody will see my face with the new glasses except me and my family. I am grateful that my sons can see me smile, because they are the most important, but I’m very sad that I can no longer smile at all the people around me. Don’t even get me started on hugs! 

I’m praying this is NOT our “new normal”.