Normal is just a setting on a Washing Machine ...

A friend gave me this! It says so, so much ...

“Normal is just a setting on a washing machine,” she told me.

I burst out laughing, so intrigued … but that little sentence says so much.

As I’m sure I quoted before, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality” from TS Eliot, and that goes for “Difference” too.

Nowadays, and seemingly even more so since Covid, people are desperate to “get back to normal”, seem to be terrified of change, probably terrified of loss. Why is this?

Change and loss happen all the time, every moment, we’re experiencing them all the time and mostly, like with the weather, there’s damned all we can do about it. there never has been, not for any creature, lifeform, on Planet Earth for the past 4.5 billion years. We live continuously on the threshold, between past, present and future, continuously in the Now … but how many of us really get that?

Now is always now. And we’re always living in it. But we may well try very hard not to be!

I call it - in my crosser moods! - Princess Thinking. It’s dreaming of Prince Charming coming to rescue you, Harry Potter waving his wand, The Fairy Godmother making everything all right again. The Silver Bullet.

Unfortunately, Silver Bullets are as rare and Hen’s Teeth and Unicorn Shit.

Now is what we’ve got, where it’s at, what it is.

I get asked for this from my clients and students sometimes and the answer’s always the same - I can’t “fix it” for you. We cannot change anything but ourselves, but when we change ourselves we see the world change around us. That really does work.

We will never get “back to normal”, the idea that we could is a complete illusion, so when we want to get back to normal we’re completely deluding ourselves. That illusion is very much perpetrated in advertising and politic, which is just another form of sales! TV ads show a lovely, Hollywood dream, how you wish life was. And their only purpose is to sell you stuff, and very likely stuff you don’t need and never thought you wanted until the beautiful dream-picture was presented to you. I mean, really, do you need a new iPhone? Is yours broke? Does it no longer do what you need? Or are you just tempted by the “shinies”, the new things it offers you and subtly tells you you can’t live without?

But maybe you’re stunned, overwhelmed, enchanted by the beautiful picture. Oh yes, I’ve been there! I was there yesterday when my network supplier sent me a text about the lates Samsung; it looks gorgeous, stunning, and their verbiage is wonderfully subtle and persuasive, I sat and stared at it, dreaming of the things I could do for at least a minute LOL

Then my Gang (my spirit team) came in with, “And what about the novel you’re finishing? What about the new app course you’re writing? Are you going to spend x-hundred quid you don’t have on this new phone, then hours of time playing with it, trying it out, seeing how to work it and what it can do, instead of getting on with the novel (which you love!) and the course that you love writing too?'“

Hmm! Nice one, guys! Dead right. I don’t need the new phone, the one I’ve got does what I want, and I’m still not fully proficient at all the amazing things it does after 3 years!

We all get transfixed but wonderful, glossy adverts, promises of the Moon, heaven, ease of life, and how the whateveritis they want us to buy is the Silver Bullet we’ve been searching for all our lives. It’s still illusion, and we still need to take a deep breath and know that. Just occasionally we’ll see something that actually does make a real, positive difference to our lives, but most of the time that’s not so.

Modern sales techniques tell the sellers to make a big deal that they’re “helping people”, not selling, not screwing money out of people btu helping them and making a positive difference to their lives. It’s mostly a lie. 99% of the time they’re pushing a “new” form of mousetrap, and you’re the mouse. We need discernment, not a new mousetrap!

And it relates to this whole illusion of “normality”. What is normal? What’s normal to you likely won’t be to me. Is one of us wrong, or are we just different? I believe there are currently 8 billion different versions of normal, for humans, on Planet Earth. Each and every one of us is normal. and each and every one of us is different from everyone else. As Oscar Wilde put it, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” We are each already normal, even if (hopefully, especially when …) we’re not like anyone else.

Difference, the fear of difference, is an ingrained thing that we need to let go of. I’ll talk about that next time …