{"id":506,"date":"2020-12-04T08:33:27","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T07:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/?p=506"},"modified":"2021-11-26T08:43:17","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T07:43:17","slug":"saying-no-to-the-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/2020\/12\/04\/saying-no-to-the-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Saying No to the Normal"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"twoclick_social_bookmarks_post_506 social_share_privacy clearfix 1.6.4 locale-de_DE sprite-de_DE\"><\/div><div class=\"twoclick-js\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/* <![CDATA[ *\/\njQuery(document).ready(function($){if($('.twoclick_social_bookmarks_post_506')){$('.twoclick_social_bookmarks_post_506').socialSharePrivacy({\"txt_help\":\"Wenn Sie diese Felder durch einen Klick aktivieren, werden Informationen an Facebook, Twitter, Flattr, Xing, t3n, LinkedIn, Pinterest oder Google eventuell ins Ausland \\u00fcbertragen und unter Umst\\u00e4nden auch dort gespeichert. N\\u00e4heres erfahren Sie durch einen Klick auf das <em>i<\\\/em>.\",\"settings_perma\":\"Dauerhaft aktivieren und Daten\\u00fcber-tragung zustimmen:\",\"info_link\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.heise.de\\\/ct\\\/artikel\\\/2-Klicks-fuer-mehr-Datenschutz-1333879.html\",\"uri\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\\\/zekkblog\\\/2020\\\/12\\\/04\\\/saying-no-to-the-normal\\\/\",\"post_id\":506,\"post_title_referrer_track\":\"Saying+No+to+the+Normal\",\"display_infobox\":\"on\"});}});\n\/* ]]> *\/<\/script><\/div>\n<p>As Christmas draws near, many of us are faced with a painful\nchoice: should we meet our parents, grandparents and vulnerable relatives,\npossibly exposing them to the dangers of the COVID-19 virus? Or do we spend the\nholidays alone, hoping that by this time next year there will be a vaccine that\nallows us to be with our families safely once again? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The hope that things will slowly go back to normal might be\nenough to keep some of us going through this dark winter without being able to\nsee our loved ones. But we should never forget that what might seem normal to\nus is actually scary, terrifying and dangerous to most people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While I long for things to return to normal, to go dancing\nwith my friends all night and sitting in a caf\u00e9 all afternoon observing people\ngo about their lives, I am haunted by\nthe idea that the normal we will all return to will be a normal that was, for\nmany people, brutish, hellish and miserable.&nbsp;Many refugees and immigrants are forced to leave their homes,\noften without their husbands, wives, children and parents. Suffering the combined\nviolence of international human trafficking gangs and the inhumanity of nation\nstates that author ever more restrictive and despotic immigration policies, many\nof these immigrants spend decades, perhaps their whole lives, trying and\nfailing to reconnect with their loved ones. I recently came across a tweet by\nan immigrant who mentioned that European immigration policies meant that they\nhad not had an opportunity to see their own parents for almost 20 years and\ncould never be with their families at moments of shared joy, grief and trauma,\nsuch as the birth or death of a family member. How perverse that we as a\nculture celebrate the right to a family life yet allow such monstrous\nseparations between family members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But  why must we return to things as they were? The pandemic restrictions  and lockdowns allow us to consider whether or not our old ways of doing  things were always the best. The pandemic is not just a time to dream about how life  used to be also to imagine new ways of living. Many tech companies in California, which drive so much of the innovation that the rest of the  world then catches up with, have already announced that they expect their  workforce to be working from home for the indefinite future. This is a tremendously  liberating move, allowing people to determine how to arrange their work life  balance and to embrace greater flexibility in their work schedules. I want to laugh  and cry when I consider how much time we all used to waste on journeys to and  from our places of work when it turns out we could have been equally effective,  if not more so, working from home. The daily rituals of our lives, such as  going to work and back home at the end of the working day, often induce a false  sense of community, making us think that our lives are more or less similar to  those of everyone else. Having our daily routines and rituals taken away from us  allows us to reconsider our unique experiences and needs as individuals.  Hopefully, the new normal to which we return is one where our individual experiences and needs will not be overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/files\/2020\/12\/woman-5588059_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-507\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-blue-color has-text-color\">Dr. Abdul Rahman Mustafa ist Mitarbeiter am Seminar f\u00fcr Islamische Theologie der Universit\u00e4t Paderborn. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Christmas draws near, many of us are faced with a painful choice: should we meet our parents, grandparents and vulnerable relatives, possibly exposing them to the dangers of the COVID-19 virus? Or do we spend the holidays alone, hoping &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/2020\/12\/04\/saying-no-to-the-normal\/\">Weiterlesen <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8844,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":809,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uni-paderborn.de\/zekkblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}