recently i had the uncomfortable experience of taking long weeks to recover from what seemed to be an ordinary cold virus. 
over the course of those weeks i moved from one state of mind to another frequently...from too ill to care much about anything except asking myself if i had enough tissues, to damning every cold virus that ever existed, to wallowing in self-pity, to continual grumpiness, to glee when i could actually breathe and have a rest from coughing.i found myself asking if this would be the new normal...would i from, now on, feel weak, debilitated and dispirited?
would my days be filled with the grinding effort to find authentic joy, lightheartedness and peace? would i no longer be able to sit in half-lotus pose or practice downward-facing dog?
as i slowly regained some semblance of the old”normal” i realised that normal is constantly changing, regardless of a cold virus. each moment provides a new ‘normal’. the concept of a norm creates a fixed value, a fixed position against which all is measured. one either fits into the range of normal or not. it is an absolute.in the midst of all of introspection i realised i simply did not want to live in the world of “normal”, of fixed ideas and concepts. what if, instead of seeking a new normal, i asked the question, “what is present right now, in this moment?” the moment itself contains the new. i can act, think, feel from the now, rather than “projecting into the future”, as a dear friend commented.yes, there were moments/hours/days/weeks of misery (four boxes of tissues of misery!).
there were long hours of low energy and listlessness and too many weeks of being unable to summon the energy to create. amid all those weeks were hundreds of thousands of ‘now’ moments. they were each ephemeral, transitory. and yet, each one was an opportunity to be in the new, each one was a new normal...until the next new normal moment.of course, in our hard-wiring to survive, i took very good care of myself, searching out remedies of all sorts to alleviate my misery. some were effective; others not. some created a pleasant now-moment; others didn’t.i am aware, in this moment of looking back, of the truth of the Buddha’s words about being attracted to the pleasant and repelled by the miserable. it is part of the work of my eldering to find equanimity in both...no easy task!all aspects of life, including cold viruses, provide a new now, a new opportunity to find a new present.