Want to know a quick way to tell if something makes sense? Explain it to a child.

Seriously.

If you ever find yourself wondering if an object or concept actually makes basic common sense, try explaining its purpose to a child.

I have spent a lot of time trying to explain the “normal” adult world to my precocious primary-schooler, which means I’ve also spent a lot of time admitting that little of it makes any actual sense. And yet we do it all anyway.

It’s therefore no wonder that, as we continue to crawl through the trenches of pandemic life, she has come to view society as a truly bizarre construct. To her, it must look like a bunch of overgrown children spinning themselves dizzy on a playground while a few sensible individuals try to keep them from flying head-first off the merry-go-round.

And she has questions.

Why are so many of us whining about being tired of the pandemic while actively doing the very things that will definitely extend it?

Who can say?

How come we continue to pretend that reposessions and evictions are things that make sense during the same pandemic that has left so many people unable to earn the money they need to pay their loans and rent?

Beats me.

Isn’t it strange how we seem to expect those of us who are fortunate enough to remain employed during this time to operate as if childcare is a thing that currently exists?

Damned if I know.

What even is money and why are we so obsessed with it when we can’t eat it, wear it or live in it? Oh and, why do we allow some people to have more than they can spend while others don’t have enough to eat?

At this point, I just tell her the truth: Adults are silly.

We so love the illusion of control that we fabricate entire systems out of thin air. We convince each other to believe in them and then pretend that we can bend these mass hallucinations to our will. We will do this even as these figments of our collective imagination crumble around our ears, because to even contemplate an alternative is to give up the illusion of control and what would we have without that?

One seven-year-old might suggest that we’d have… basic common sense.

Her mother is inclined to agree. Wouldn’t that be an interesting position from which to start fresh?

Imagine a reality where the pandemic that caused more than 600,000 deaths in one of the world’s most powerful countries inspired universal acceptance of radical ideas like healthcare as a basic human right.

What if watching the so-called first world’s implosion (orchestrated by its staggeringly money-obsessed, individualistic culture) helped other countries realise that they’re not role models after all?

Picture a world where society’s lowest-paid workers turned out to be essential to survival during the early days of the pandemic and then didn’t have to go on strike to demand a living wage just months later. Even better, what if we realised how counterproductive it is to ask people to choose between protecting themselves from a deadly virus and making enough money to eat? And then we finally acted on the consistently positive results of Universal Basic Income (or *gasp* even a guaranteed income)?

How cool would it be if those running the educational systems recognized this forced move into digital schooling as an opportunity to explore different learning methods? You know, instead of treating it like a brief pause and expecting students to perform ordinarily under extraordinary circumstances.

Study what the world would look like if, after carbon emissions dipped by seven percent in 2020 due to the halt in global industry, we finally accepted the fact that personal responsibility isn’t actually the solution to climate change. (Guess who came up with that carbon footprint idea in the first place.)

Any and all of this (and more) could have happened if we’d looked at this GLOBAL situation as an opportunity to reflect on how much of normal life made zero sense… instead of slipping into a half-assed holding pattern with the aim of returning to the status quo as soon as possible.

But hey, anything’s better than this, right? Even if it means rushing right back into the same old new normal.