OfficeSpace: 3. Where in the World Is Normal?

"Everything must change, nothing stays the same. Everyone will change, no one, no one stays the same. The young become the old, and mysteries do unfold. For that's the way of time; no one, and nothing goes unchanged." - Bernard Ighner

Does it seem that everyone wants to either get back to normal or quickly get to the new normal? Working from home ain’t fun anymore, ain’t all it was cranked up to be. Gotta get back to the office to feel the community & sociality of it.

What if there is no going back to 'normal' and there is no 'new normal'! Please don't get me wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong in longing for the best of the past or the brightest of the future. Stepping into something new can be simultaneously exciting and frightening.

Is the push for 'normal', old or new; because we have grown impatient over the years, may have lost the discipline to postpone gratification? We want 'it' now! Perhaps that is a contributing factor and there are others. What about the stress caused by the global situation we are collectively in? In recent headlines, the US COVID numbers are going back up, stress from it is taking its toll in the form of depression, and Europe is starting its second wave of the pandemic.

"There are trends that may explain the [European] deterioration. The surge comes just after the summer vacation season, as workers return to city centers and children go back to school. The World Health Organization has suggested the increase could be partly down [due] to the relaxation of measures and people dropping their guard, and evidence indicates young people are driving the second surge in Europe."

Before I go further, I offer my condolences to those who lost a loved one due to this virus, making it that much tougher and much more stressful at this time for you and yours. As the patriarch of my wife's and my family, and due to the passing of many associates; at best, I can understand what you are going thru, if one of your family members passed away prematurely due to the virus.

For those out of work, the loss of a job is certainly stressful. According to the U.S. BLS, there are 13 million unemployed and 31M currently receiving some form of unemployment benefits. The current number of permanent job losses is now at 3.4M. Without more economic relief and with the current packages expiring this situation will further deteriorate.

On the Holmes-Rahe stress scale, the loss of a spouse is the #1 stressor, loss of a close family member #5, and the loss of a close friend #17. Though every job has challenges and stress, the loss of one's job is #8 of the 43 H-R life stress factors. If you take any one of the prior four life events and add any combination of the eighteen indirectly related factors in the list; it is easy to understand why many are suddenly experiencing an extraordinary amount of stress!

"PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – COVID Anger, It is a very real thing, and it’s growing. You can hear it in people’s voices and see it in a lack of patience.“We are dealing with extra levels and layers of stress than we’ve ever had to deal with ever before and on a very large scale,” says James Shamlin, LCSW Cranberry Psychological Center. “We’re dealing with more fear and holding onto more stress day today I think allowing us to be a little shorter on sleep and not able to use our coping mechanisms and stress reductions kind of strategies and holding onto our fears of the future.”

No one chose the current pandemic, and as has been said; it chose us. In doing so, it took away some life's choices from us, AND added some we would never normally have to make, plus placed others undeservedly upon us; forcing us to make sudden adjustments and changes to our lives; pushing us immediately into high stress situations. It has placed individuals and their friends, and their family at great risk. Our usual support network is disrupted. We have to go back and manage our most basic physiological needs, represented as pictured in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. A job loss prevents us from providing for basics like food on the table, to pay bills, risk losing our home or be evicted. Those are probable reasons why we see from some, strong reactions against any controls on their life to control the spread. There are no Rx or over-the-counter remedies. Until there are proven medicinal &/or pharmaceutical solutions; the only preventative and remedial ones are masks, distancing, personal hygiene, hospitalization, and Zoom; with the latter not at all a solution for the majority.

We will be frustrated with the uncertainty of, the lack of information about, and our ability to cope with COVID over the next couple of years. The current societal solutions imposed upon us were not organic, hence they feel unnatural and in turn seem more stressful. The controls are not the new way, they are only a temporary way, a workaround to safely walk the path to the future. We can choose how to best react to the crisis we are in, even if we lost someone close to us. Although COVID has caused the loss of life, can be life-threatening, or create lifelong health problems for others; its presence and our need to distance from it are thankfully not permanent. For the good of us all, we can manage thru it; just as generations before us lived thru catastrophes, poverty, plagues, pandemics, wars, and rumors of wars; that were much longer than anyone thought they would be at the time.

Is wishing to go back to 'normal' or looking for a 'new normal' paradoxical? Does going back to normal or desperately seeking a new normal, give us a sense of false hope? In some events where we passed a tipping point, such as the loss of a loved one; there is no path to go back to normal. There is only the long walk through Shock, Anger, Denial, Guilt, Grievance, and Acceptance. We may have reached a world-wide tipping point with this particular airborne virus, that has dramatically and permanently impacted the way we all live on earth.

Why do we yearn for normal? Why when things are normal, it starts to 'get old'? Then we wish to quickly get to a new normal, and the cycle repeats. We seem to be on a constant search for another new scenario; hoping someday to get to nirvana or paradise. Why is it when we get over the rainbow; for some reason we then wish to get back home. As many have discovered, home or normal, isn't a place; it is where your heart is and where your spirit lives!

Where would you find 'normal' anyway? Well, ICYMI; it is a town in Illinois, and I'm told it is a setting on a washing machine; but looking at my washing machine, no longer is there just a 'normal' setting. Each 'wash load' requires different settings. Have we actually been living under the illusion of normal? Instead, we really only have schedules for a season, and within it, every day; the weather is different, we are in a different mood, minute by minute our schedule morphs, the day becomes fresh and new; then the next season in our life begins.

We will have to discover new ways of being social, to serve, to learn, to work, to travel, to play, and to best live short-term and long-term. A few of those new ways will help us be more prepared for any future situation. The future will require constant adaptation. Going with the flow of disruptions, as we continually improve and evolve. New conditions will require us to be agile; to be flexible, and to be quick on our feet; in order to do more than just survive, but to thrive! I realize this is much easier said than done. I tell folks that it took me 50 years to become an over-night success and I'm still working on it.

A trip in the WayBack (WABAC) Machine with Mr. Peabody & Sherman

Perhaps we can understand our reactions to the current extreme crisis by going back, way back to the base of our triune brain, to the least evolved part of it; where the autonomic nervous system (ANS) resides. A primary purpose of that system is to prepare us when under stress, to make a survival decision: 'fight or flight'. The ANS is there to help us survive from the dinosaurs of yesterday and those things that appear like those giants, today. Understandably, the ANS, can't and doesn't differentiate between a velociraptor and a villain; it moves blood from the brain and stomach to the muscles, so you are prepared to make a binary decision to respond to any danger. Note how Maslow's model lines up with the brain's functions. This may help explain our's or others strong and even over-the-top reactions towards this unusual state of being that we find ourselves in.

However, not all stress is the same nor does everyone react to the same stress the same way. Too little stress or too much stress over long periods of time, called chronic stress; in either extreme; creates the risk of the same life issues: i.e. boredom, leading to bad behaviors or choices, that may lead to unhealthy addictions, depression, disease, or death. Research about life on Native American Reservations and other research from Japan [under the subject of karoshi or 'death by overwork'] support this. Medical research says that 90% of illnesses are stress related. Dr. Denis Waitley says this, "It isn't what happens to you, it's how you take it."

When we choose to step out of our view of 'normal', step outside of our comfort zone; or when we are forced to do so; the ANS cycle subconsciously begins. We like to stay inside our comfort zone because it is a safe place with low risk to live in. Fear of failure may imprison us inside our comfort zone, make us want to stay in our cave.

"It's better to have tried and failed than to live life wondering, what would've happened if I had tried." - Alfred Lord Tennyson

In order to grow and learn, we need to step outside of ourselves, then settle into a new normal for us; which in turn expands the size of our comfort zone. Then, it will be easier to respond to the next new thing that comes into our life and allow another phase or cycle of our life to begin. Progressing iteratively, using feedback from our past experiences, allows us to more easily handle new ones. Now may be a good time, even during this period of uncertainty, to up-skill, re-skill, or even consider changing occupations for a future job.

Back to the future

Working or learning from home isn't for everyone and yet, working from work doesn't work for everyone either. When we were required to work in the office, we yearned to telecommute, for 4-day work weeks, and for more paid time off; all to have a better work<>life balance. Few people have a dedicated home office space to go to work in &/or have no distractions from the kids or pets. Even if they do have the physical and computing resources without disruptions, their type of work may require them to leave home to make a living. For those that can work remotely; working in your kitchen, family room, or bedroom every day, indefinitely; is not at all what WFH should be; and that adds to the level of collective stress in our home; which should be a sanctuary from all that.

Not all business interactions, customer transactions, products, or services are possible or as valuable using only virtual methods. Some industries will take a big hit now and then take years to recover. Sadly, some won't recover at all. Conversely, not all of those organizations require an in-person, face2face experience, 100% of the time.

New and emerging technologies, especially the likes of 5G, Starlink, plus the localization and mobilization of 'super-computer like' chip power, residing in a device in our purse or pocket, or on our wrist; will proliferate our lives; allowing us to work from anywhere, with anyone, at any time; but it will not be a new normal. Instead it offers flexibility, options, and more accepted ways to live and work in the world, in business, our community, in society, with our friends, in our families, and in our personal life. In turn, we gain more freedom, not less.

We will have to use the current period of uncertainty that we were thrust into, to experiment and learn what combination of physical and virtual activities work best for each company, consumer, customer, employee, teacher, and child. Many are finding, even if not by choice or design, by default; that some elements of the virtual way of life aren't so bad after all. As a result, Amazon's projected growth is 34% per year over the next five years, because more people than ever before, have adapted to shopping on-line, something some have never done before. Since COVID, we've seen an average of 27% increase in on-line use of financial services & transactions.

Long term, for holistic developmental reasons, preschool and K-16 classrooms will eventually be filled with students again, so they may be best prepared for the future. But they will gain knowledge and learn valuable skills outside of class and some of that will be virtual experiences too. Children, parents, and teachers in school, and for those at work in any business in any workplace; will all need to learn when and how to learn, live and work; physically &/or virtually; in order to discover the best balance for our life's journey; using whichever medium or the message is best; to achieve the desired outcome or experience required at any moment in time. More hybrid solutions in combination with more optional work, education, and social solutions using physical or virtual methods will need to co-exist.

Some businesses are easily adapting to a virtual workplace; learning that every building, cube, corporate meeting room, office, or training room is no longer needed. REI, a sporting goods cooperative; decided to sell their newly built and unused 400K sq. ft. HQ on 8 acres and have all of those employees work from satellite offices &/or from home with more flexible work schedules. Last month they placed that property up for sale and weeks later sold it to Facebook for $368M. FB needed office space for their future growth and most likely, because some office spaces will need to accommodate fewer workers in more facility space.

Thirty or so years ago, I was passing thru our company's lobby, shaking my head and murmuring to myself. The security guard asked me, "How are you doing Rich?" I said, "Ok, under the circumstances." I'll never forget his response: "Rich, never live under the circumstances, always live above them." I thanked him for that and took that advice with me to this day.

In dealing with the present, do all you can to live above the circumstances, even though it isn't normal now. There is no 'new normal', only opportunities to try something new. If you choose to or are forced to exit your comfort zone; don't be afraid of failure; learn from it and expand your zone. Either way; engage it, embrace it, enjoy what you can, experiment, and evolve inside the experience; into a new way. Allow it to enlighten you. Let it unleash your creativity. That approach will make your 'new normal', 'normal' for you. Have the courage to use challenges to renew yourself or create a new you.