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Psychology | Lifestyle | Normal | Mind
What Is Normal?
And Why Would You Want To Go Back To Whatever You Thought Normal Was?
The year 2022 is right around the proverbial corner and I hear people saying: wow I hope 2022 will get us back to normal!
In many ways that hope is frightening.
I don't want to go back to whatever some people considered normal.
In the lives of too many people right now — wanting to “go back to normal” means wanting to go back to a time that they idolize but many did not live in. Like the 1950s or the 1850s.
Getting back to “normal” is not possible — and thinking that you can go back to normal — well — that’s not normal.
Since I have been a professor of Developmental Psychology much of my life — let me start with something that I do when I teach.
Whenever I teach any kind of psychology course, I tell the students what we’re going to cover. I give them a curriculum — which I handed out on Day 1 when I taught in person, or for an online course — they read it online — and it was available to read well before they signed up for my class!
Yet almost every time I teach — one of the first questions I get is:
