In school, I learned about this concept of shifting baselines. The slight or large change in a system, an environment, a person. How we quickly adjust like it was always this way, to correct and acknowledge in order to move through. It becomes the acceptable and relatable new normal. Ugh. The new normal. I hate that phrase.

This is where we are in 2021. Our baseline has shifted.

What is normal now would have required our minds – back in the before times – to move heaven and earth to even conjure an image of how life could be, would be.

These phrases that are now just rolling off our tongues day in and out – vaccine status, immunity, post-pandemic plans, I can’t wait to hug you again, I ate indoors at a restaurant. Do you have it stored in your memory? Our old baseline?

And then the other half of this horror show. The phrases that some have been saying all along…I can’t breathe. Racism is real. Seeing color is real. Accountability is not the same as being cancelled is real. I don’t have to smile at you just because you ask is real. Being born on this soil is real. I am from here is real. My lived experience is real. My life is real.

Has that baseline shifted? I don’t think so.