I join the queue with my single item – but, as the shopper in front of me is all but checked out with her overflowing trolley, there should be no real delay…
“That’ll be £101.40 please” – ” Oh! that’s too much. I don’t have enough to cover that. I’ll have to transfer some money.” Pulls out i-phone and opens banking app while waiting for wifi/phone signal to catch up.
Seriously? Who does that?
I’m (re)reading a biography of Mr Churchill, which right now is at the early war (WW2) years. One of the interesting- aside- observations (ie not about WC) is how quickly ordinary people, adjusted to the reality of “the Blitz”. Providing you yourself (or family) were not hit, the nightly raid warnings, the ever prevelent gas masks, the blocked streets and dangerous ruins, and the -omnipresent -dust, became a “normal” part of daily life with astonishing speed.
Of course, there is a school of thought which will ascribe this to “British Pluck” and stiffupperlippyness, but read diaries from say, the seige of Vicksburg (a protracted American Civil war affair, where a whole city full of civilians was beseiged), and you find a similar sentiment. A normalising of , what should seem “brutal” reality.
You find this same “hell is just everyday” in accounts from the trenches (all sides), survivors in the wilderness, the list goes on.
I suspect, it represents some kind of survival mechanism for human kind. An ingrained ability to habituate to the most extreme circumstance, to allow us to cope.
I don’t have a doctorate in Psychology, or Social Anthropology, so, I offer this up without source or reference, purely for conversation. However, if we can normalise such extremes, or perhaps normalise while in such extremes. How much easier to adapt our own day to day lives “normal”, even when that is not actually healthy or prosperous or even happy.
When it’s just “your” life’ you don’t really consider (what seems) normal to be a choice.
I got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes,(what fresh hell is this?) and the big clinic appointment is still to come, however it’s fairly clear that the road I’ve walked to get here is all my own doing. I’ve started re-examinig my life choices (again), and reconsidering (more of) the things I just take for granted; snacks, health, indestructability, portion sizes, T-shirt sizes. Unsurprisingly, I see that I’ve accepted many things I should have questioned.
I have become habituated…but not, it seems, to the behaviour of the average shopper!
Next week in IaDL – What the hell is Diabetic retinopathy?
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 