New normal

The first time a giant ball of steel swinging from a long chain came within 4 meters of my window I was somewhat perturbed.  It is kind of unnerving to watch a thing that is hanging loose and which would crush me flat if it hit me wander so close by.  Makes you wonder if the person driving the crane *really* knows what they are doing.  I mean, I assume they are competent.  But am I going to die ten seconds from now?

But that happened months and months ago.  Now the crane wanders right past my window all the time and I barely even register it.

Just like cars, really.  If you take a person who has no idea about cars and tell them they are going to zoom down a road at 100 kph in a metal box and other metal boxes going 100 kph the other way are going to pass within a meter of them they would think you are suicidal.  What if the person driving the other box twitches, just for a second?  Doesn't everybody die?  Can you really trust all the random buffoons in the human race not to kill you?

Mostly you can, it turns out.  Some of us die, but generally we barrel down our highways, zooming right past each other, and everything works.

We tend to get upset about things changing, but when we don't manage to push them back we rapidly come to accept the new normal, no matter how weird it would have seemed before, and just shrug and stop noticing.

I wonder what things I currently take for granted will suddenly strike me as bizarre when I finally stare at them really hard.  Sometimes I look at my phone and try to remember what it was like to not have one and I can barely do it.

Which is all to say that I continue to be surprised by humanity's flexibility.  We so often hate change, but then we quickly adapt and not only stop caring, but even stop noticing the stuff that is new.