Finding The “New Normal” This Passover
As Passover approaches, I can’t help but feel like, how it says in the Four Questions, this year is different from all other years.
The differences scare me. Friends are cancelling their weddings, losing their jobs, or finding it increasingly hard to stay afloat as they are trapped alone in their apartments. I’m thankful every day that I managed to make it home, but even home isn’t like it usually is, considering it’s now a bulwark from the world instead of a vacation.
I’ve written and rewritten this post what feels like a million times. I know I’m luckier than many people, including my aforementioned friends. I’m healthy, as of today; I’m quarantining myself from Nana for only a few more days to make 2 full weeks; I’m safe in a home that has an adequate supply of toilet paper. But that still doesn’t make it easy to see so many people falling into the thought patterns and behaviors I fought so hard to get rid of, and to struggle with them myself at one of my favorite times of the year.
Passover has always been my favorite Jewish holiday, and all I wanted this year was to have a “normal” Passover. By that, I mean the small Seder I’m used to with my parents and Nana, with everyone doing the parts they love best and just being happy together.
I’ve seen a lot of people using the phrase “the new normal” as the coronavirus pandemic drags on, and may continue for what seems like months. When I first saw this phrase, I scoffed. How was any of this supposed to be “normal?”
I’ve moved back home - something I haven’t done since college - with my laptop, some video games, and a few stuffed animals. I’m working from my childhood bedroom, and yet, nothing is as it was when I lived here for real. I still have a few more days until I can see Nana, who at 91 years old is high-risk. None of this is “normal,” and nothing is likely to be normal for a while, if the cancellations many months out are any indication.
I’m trying to tell myself that, although I have an idealized version of Passover in my head, real life never quite hits every point of that fantasy. My family celebrates at home now, instead of at Nana’s old apartment that she moved away from years ago. We have the dog with us now, because we’re at my parents’ house. And technically, I’ve never actually kept Passover kashrut laws, even during the Seder itself.
I’ve celebrated Passover over video chat from the middle of an anime convention, over the phone in college, and in the hospital. I’ve made it work, no matter how shitty it feels. And it’s what I - and everyone - am working towards now: a new normal.
Normal has to mean seeing my friends and going on dates virtually, as opposed to in real life. Normal has to mean shifting everything in my routine from my diet and exercise habits to the hours that I work, considering I’m in a different time zone now.
Normal has to mean that instead of using my work planner, I’m using a “Quarantine Quest” journal from The Hero’s Journal to help me feel gratitude for what I still have and look forward to what may come in the future.
But normal also has to mean giving up on some things I was dreaming of, and trying to find my way from anger and frustration to accepting that I can’t, in fact, change this situation.
Long story short, I’m trying to move forward like it shows in this graph my dad sent me this morning. I’m not in the “growth zone,” not yet. I’m taking things day by day, sometimes minute by minute, and trying to let go of the iron grip of control I hold over as much of my life as possible. I’ve got a system for which news I read, and what I discuss with friends and family. If I see people panicking, I’m not yet in a good enough spot to help them work through their negative thoughts, but I am able to help distract them to put their mind in a happier place.
I’m trying to see this Passover as a chance to move from a bad situation to a better one. It’s usually glossed over, at least at my family’s Seder, that the Israelites spent 40 years in the desert before reaching the land of Israel. There was no instant new, perfect world even in a story about going from a bad place to a good place. There’s a middle ground, better than what was, but not the place of dreams coming true or even a normal life.
This Passover, I hope all of us can find a better place each day than we were in the day before, as we seek out both our “new normal” and a meaningful holiday.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.