Is There a New Normal?

I've been noticing a pattern in the news and commentariat in the last few months: at the very same time headlines shout --"are we getting back to normal?" --while just beside them others scream --"life will never be the same, so get used to it."

Take this past Sunday's New York Times for example: On the one hand was the article on the front page of the real estate section titled "Honk if You Think it is Over," saying it is exciting to be in NY real estate again -- back to the good old days of stratospheric prices and bidding wars.

On the other hand was a piece in the business section about the fall of the "the efficient market hypothesis," . The efficient market hypothesis said that stock markets were rational. The article was about the discrediting of the model, which many believe is itself responsible for the financial crisis -- "an academic model that offered a false sense of security," in a way reminiscent of Soviet style Marxism-Leninism in the early 1990's. This is just one of the many articles telling us that life will never be the same and that we don't yet have the frameworks to replace the old ones, an unsettling thought.

After watching this pattern I've come to a realization. Both are in some sense true. We each need to hold on to these two sides, the normal and the radically new, even as it begins to feel like an increasingly precarious balance. While we don't want to delude ourselves into thinking we can go backwards into a false sense of security, we also must live from day to day with a feeling of calm and connection to ourelves and our pasts -- to how it used to be.

At the same time, we must learn to be acute observers of the new and the upcoming, constantly opening our minds to the possibility that long held assumptions might need some challenging.

What's difficult is that we don't have good examples of what this balance looks or feels like.

I have found one way to get this -- to really get it --is to try the yoga position "tree pose," --standing on one foot like a stork, with arms raised overhead like a tree swaying in the wind.

You are simultaneously rooted on the ground, standing as you always have, while you concentrate on balance, and the discomfort of being precariously close to falling.

Another yoga pose that I've found helpful is Utkatasana, "awkward chair pose," sometimes also called "powerful pose." It requires you while standing, to sit back as if in a chair, while holding your hands up straight above your head. It is simultaneously extremely awkward -- you wish, every moment you are in it that you could straighten your legs -- but you also feel a sense of power as you remain in the pose and try to rise above your discomfort.

You might not be drawn to yoga, and may well have your own ways of learning this new balance.

What keeps you grounded in these crazy times?

What strategies do you have for challenging your assumptions about the future?