Waiting for Normal

Most mornings, I wake up, walk the dogs, and almost instinctively start the latest podcast.

I tell myself I want to understand, and I do. I have deep respect for the intellectual rigor of many of the analysts, journalists, and podcast hosts I listen to. Serious inquiry matters. Understanding the world matters.

But lately, I have found myself wondering whether understanding and control are always the same thing. One podcast often leads to another. One expert points me to another. One explanation generates three more questions. Trump says one thing. Netanyahu says another. Markets react. Commentators speculate. Somehow, despite all the information, certainty remains strangely elusive.

I’ve noticed something. Have you? The search itself never seems to end.

Perhaps that is what has struck me most over the past six years.

COVID.

Wars.

Inflation.

Artificial intelligence.

Political upheaval.

Energy crises.

Geopolitical instability.

For years, many of us treated these events as interruptions, temporary periods to get through before life returned to normal. But what if uncertainty itself is not the interruption? What if it is the condition?

Psychologists have long observed that human beings are uncomfortable with unanswered questions. Perhaps understandably so.

As a student of diplomacy and government, I have become increasingly aware that uncertainty is not always an accident.

Sometimes, it is the strategy. Leaders do not always reveal what they know. Negotiations happen behind closed doors. Ambiguity itself can be a source of leverage. Trump has often used unpredictability as part of his negotiating style.

In many ways, uncertainty has long been a tool of diplomacy. And perhaps that is what I find so fascinating.

We know this. We know leaders themselves are operating with incomplete information. We know commentators are speculating. We know experts disagree. And still, I catch myself believing that perhaps one more podcast, one more analyst, or one more article will finally provide certainty.

And I find myself wondering why. If the people at the very top are navigating uncertainty, what exactly am I hoping to achieve? Am I seeking understanding or reassurance? Are those two things always the same?

Daniel Kahneman, Israeli-American psychologist and behavioral economist warned that confidence and certainty are not the same. Writer and risk analyst Nassim Taleb has argued that the goal is not perfect prediction but resilience.

Perhaps we have mistaken prediction for preparedness. Perhaps understanding and certainty are not the same either. Over the past six years, I have noticed something else.

I still make plans.

I still book holidays.

I still make dinner reservations.

But I do so differently now, not because I have become pessimistic, but because experience has made me humbler. I plan, knowing that things may change. I expect disruptions. Strangely, I have found that this has not made me any less hopeful. If anything, it has made me more appreciative of ordinary moments and less attached to the illusion that everything must go according to plan.

Plans change.

Deals collapse.

Wars restart.

Predictions fail.

History has a habit of surprising us.

And life goes on.

Hour by hour.

Day by day.

None of this is meant to delegitimize the seriousness of war.

Wars matter.

Politics matters.

Safety matters.

But when does waiting mean we have stopped living? While we wait, life quietly unfolds around us. Children are growing. Parents are aging. Books remain unread. Conversations are postponed. Ordinary Tuesdays come and go. And I sometimes wonder whether what many of us are grieving is not simply the latest crisis but the loss of a world that seemed more predictable. A world where plans felt fixed, where news cycles ended, and where certainty seemed attainable. Perhaps our memories of normal were always a little more stable than reality itself.

Perhaps certainty was always more fragile than we imagined. And perhaps that is why so many of us feel exhausted. The modern world rewards certainty. Politics rewards certainty. Social media rewards certainty. Experts are expected to sound certain. Yet reality itself remains stubbornly ambiguous. And perhaps that tension is exhausting.

Because the world around us increasingly promises clarity, while life itself refuses to deliver it. Perhaps we are not waiting for peace. Perhaps we are waiting for certainty. And perhaps that is why the search never ends. Perhaps that is what has made the past six years so exhausting, not the crises themselves, but the feeling that life has somehow been on hold until they are resolved, as though real life will begin again once things settle down. And yet, life never actually stopped. It has been happening all along.

In ordinary Tuesdays. In family dinners. In friendships. In books half-read. In holidays still taken. In plans made even though they may change. Perhaps that is what resilience really looks like. Not waiting for uncertainty to disappear. But refusing to postpone life until it does.

Over the past six years, we’ve learned that another crisis always follows the last. Another election. Another conflict. Another deal. Another disruption. Another reason to say: “I’ll relax when…”

And I sometimes wonder whether we are still waiting for life to return to what we remember as normal.

But what if normal never comes back?