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No, You Aren’t Crazy. Things Really Are Different.
What’s different is us, because Covid sent everyone to a different country, and we’ve returned to a place that hasn’t changed.
Anyone who moves knows that ‘home’ is never the same after you’ve left it for awhile. And often, what you accepted as ‘normal’ at home turns out to be anything but.
To move is to step outside one’s circle. Once you do so, it’s almost impossible to step completely back inside.
A decade ago, my wife and I moved overseas with the kids for new jobs. The first year we returned, just for a few weeks in the summer, I visited my old work colleagues expecting news.
There was no news. There was no news at all. The place, a high school, was exactly the same as I’d left it a year ago. Different students in different grades but that’s it and that’s always how it is with schools. That’s part of how it doesn’t change.
My wife, our kids, myself: we could have been foreigners touring our town for all the transformation we now held. We were filled with news and strange and exciting experiences, with eye-opening insight, even towards our old home.
Nobody was interested. Their world hadn’t changed and so neither had they.
