Everything and Nothing is Normal
On January 20, 2021, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as the respective President and Vice President of the United States.
On January 20, 2021, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden suited up together for the first time as teammates on the Brooklyn Nets.
It was a day.
Normality has been a pretty prominent societal theme over the last four years, especially so over the last 10 months. When something doesn’t feel normal (like, say, domestic terrorists ransacking the Capitol at the behest of the president and his allies in Congress, or a global pandemic), are we supposed to keep constantly reminding ourselves that it isn’t normal in order to maintain our fraying tethers to civilized society? Or do we try to ease the existential whiplash and mental and emotional burden by doing our best to “adjust” to our new normal? And do we risk losing that grip on normality altogether if we simply adjust and inure ourselves to our new normal?
At the outset of his presidency — his campaign, really — Donald Trump filled weeks’ worth of news cycles about “norms” in the span of hours, leaving us in a dense fog that wound up not clearing for a half-decade, unsure if the way out was by internalizing his every transgression and fertilizing that anger into political action, or for the sake of personal sanity, ignoring him altogether.
The latter was a privilege many didn’t have, though few could be blamed for indulging ignorance so long as they were putting their best progressive foot forward in other ways. Achieving “new normality” would become an exercise in ignoring tweets, but attending a protest. Turning off CNN, but making a donation. Muting your aunt on Facebook, then calling your Congressman. Ignorant to be blissful enough, but not unaware.
Throughout the 2016 campaign it was so hard for me to conceive of a world in which Donald Trump was president of the United States that like many, I didn’t even consider it an option. When it happened, I was consumed by catastrophic thought for months. It strangely waned a bit when he finally became president and that fear of the unknown subsided, but I was still living in a world that my mind couldn’t quite accept. Donald Trump was the president of the United States of America. My brain rejected the notion.
And yet, at some point over the last four years, I accepted it. Eventually the tweets didn’t give me anxiety, they just warranted an eye roll. The never-ending parade of gaslighting surrogates didn’t draw my ire, they just left me exhausted. Certain inflection points raised my anxiety levels, but for the most part I was just sad and resigned. Of course, this was a privilege that my race, gender and socioeconomic status afforded me, and I’m still figuring out how to keep a healthy fervor about all the ways Trump and the modern GOP have stifled progress and justice, while not letting it spike my anxiety.
So our abnormal became the new normal. And then a global pandemic struck.
The administration rolled out their predictable playbook of malignant obfuscation, and it resulted in death on a scale our country hasn’t seen since World War II. For those of us who have survived, the dense fog intensified. Maybe 10 months later we’ve gotten used to this version of normal. But in a world where we’re still starved for human connection and socioeconomic stability, that doesn’t bring much solace.
Yesterday the fog cleared, if not tangibly then symbolically. Our new Vice President is a Black woman of South Asian descent who was previously the attorney general and U.S. Senator of the biggest state in the union. Our new President is an eminently qualified former Vice President; a truly decent, empathic human being whose soul has been fortified by unthinkable tragedy — a man with our best national interests clearly at heart. The inauguration was beautiful and cathartic. Despite the abundant masks and lack of a crowd, for the first time in a long time, feelings of normality returned.
That lasted for a few good hours. Then I had to cover Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden’s first game together as Brooklyn Nets.
Normality has been a constant theme since I began on the Nets’ social media team in September 2018. Granted, there’s turbulence that anyone in this line of work deals with. Then there’s your team uniting three of the most uniquely talented offensive players in NBA history. Normal changes so frequently around these parts, by the time I come around to accepting the current version of it, there’s been a revision. So I continue to do my job telling the story of the Brooklyn Nets, regardless of whoever happens to be wearing the uniform at that moment in time.
Last night was obviously not normal. Not for me, for Nets fans, or for the NBA. Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving are teammates. They didn’t win last night, but I have a hunch that will happen less frequently. Eventually it will start to feel normal, and that’ll be normal. I’ll be grateful to have less of my brainspace occupied by national politics and at some point in time, even more grateful to be able to enjoy the trappings of a pandemic-less society in order to blow off some steam from what has suddenly become an even more demanding job.
Normality is a matter of perception. What I’m going to is continue to push back against things that don’t feel right, and embrace things that do. A Biden/Harris administration feels right. And a Durant/Harden/Irving-led Nets? From my desk, that feels right too.
