New Year... New Normal?

I ran across this cartoon and had to laugh. While I certainly have political views... and some of these are quite passionate as they are for many people. So... I admit to being politically conservative and having a moderate point of view. With this in mind you can probably assume I didn't vote for Barack Obama... and you'd be right. With all the politics of the past election season, and all the drama of the so called fiscal cliff, and the cartoon above... all of this got me thinking about the New Year and maybe a "New Normal."


It is a new year, and often a new year brings the promise of, or at least some hope that things will be better. Though, I will wonder if this new year holds that much promise of things being better. Of course, one can have two attitudes about all this. One could look at this new year with the glass half full and find lots of ways to see the promise of new opportunities. Or, one could look at the new year as the glass half empty, and see the promise of despair. But... rather than look at this from these two vantage points, I'd like to reflect on this from the vantage point of a new normal.

We are living in a time of rapid change and changing understandings that has few if any places from which grab hold of. It seems we are creating a new normal most every year. This is unprecedented for most of us today. For most of us, our lives up until say the 1970's was pretty stable. For people during this time range life seemed to move with predictability, or at the very least seemed slower in pace. For my children and those born in the late 70's thru the present time it's been anything but. I've heard many of my peers lament how the times have gone to hell in a hand basket. I too have lamented this at times, but I've also tried to look at the positives of our changing world.

The truth is the world is never at a constant, and I would argue that the world has never been stable to any degree. While we might long for the good ole days, those days of our memory aren't coming back... period. So... we might as well get on with the best life we can.

While I don't particularly like the politics of our new normal, I do like what the new normal holds for me as a person. I do like the fact that I as a Jesus follower ( I like this better than being called Christian) am not a majority. I do like the fact life seems harder (not really) because I believe it helps us prioritize or lives to what is most important... and for me at my age... that is important at the moment. I do like all the new technology of our new normal, but I don't like what it is doing to our relationships. And, there are other things of the new normal I like as well.

The new normal also presents new opportunities for a variety of things, but also the new normal present challenges to our lives that often give us multiple dilemmas that have multiple consequences, and often this presents us with headaches.

The New Year... and the New Normal bring mixed emotions and hesitations for many, but for me... I'd like to view the glass as half-full. At least for today.

Happy New Year... and Happy New Normal :))