Hypernormalization

 There is a word for what many people, including me, are doubtlessly feeling--that the world is crumbling before our eyes, but most people seem to be coping quite well. It’s called hypernormalization, which refers to people going about their daily lives in the midst of enormous social upheaval because of their perceived lack of power to respond to the upheaval and their inability to imagine a different world. I have written before about the struggle to find one’s place and purpose in a tumultuous world. The inability to answer the question: what does it mean to have a successful and purposeful life today? And, that post was written before Oct. 7, which has permanently changed many of us in ways that we don’t fully fathom yet. I don’t have any solutions, but I do know that pretending everything is normal is not worse than being paralyzed by despair. Or at least paralyzed for long, and seeing despair as an ethical response to the upheaval. In the past few days, I have been watching a video that perfectly captures both the pain and injustice of today’s world and the hope we need. It starts with a white American woman and an adorable curly-haired brown little girl. The video starts with both of them pretending to be sleeping bunnies. They then wake up around and start dancing, which is when we see both the girl’s legs are prosthetics--she is a double amputee from Gaza, but you would never know it just by looking at her cheerful angelic face. If a child double amputee whose father and siblings are still trapped in Gaza can laugh and small, the case for despair feels much weaker.