Normalcy

I finished Ling Ma’s Severance yesterday, an entertaining plague novel that took me out of the plague novel we’re currently living in. What the novel got shamelessly and maddeningly right is our compulsion for normalcy at whatever the cost. We’re all guilty of this. I’m guilty of this. I continue to use the same route to drive to work, do the same job for eight hours, drive home on the same route, buy groceries at the same grocery store, workout my same workouts, make the same dinners, watch the same TV, talk to the same people, and sleep on the same bed. But we’re not living in normal times. If wearing a mask reduces the spread of the coronavirus by even a single percent, what’s the harm in wearing one? I don’t get it. Montana is the oldest state in the West. Shouldn’t we think of our elders before we think of ourselves?