We're approaching the end of another day, another Friday in our lives.
For Ukraine under attack, it should not be another ordinary Friday, but circumstances made it one more ordinary day among the other 841 days since the start of the war. There are so many days that it became a new reality, a parallel life. This is the Ukrainian version of the "new normal."
It must be Friday number 120 under such circumstances. Under the threat of having our cities bombed, our homes destroyed. Destruction is not really what we fear anymore, because each one of us is so destroyed inside that destruction itself became quite ordinary. Quite another ordinary fact of life, one that hurts, but we somehow manage to move forward.
We want to restore our Fridays as they should always be: a day to decompress from the workweek, a day to relax, to gather with friends, to watch a new TV series, to take the family to a city park. All those ordinary things that made each Friday so deliciously ordinary in peaceful times.
The new ordinary fashion of things just suffocated the formerly ordinary life we had. Maybe it's to make ourselves more thankful for the life we had three years ago, and never cease to be grateful for each day of our lives, no matter if they seem uninteresting or boring. Sometimes, the excitement of them is precisely in their normalcy, in their apparent blandness.
If there's something this war demonstrated it was that we have to see the beauty of each day during peaceful times, even the days when they seem devoid of any beauty. Because even the ugliest day during peacetime is better than any day during a war.
We just want our ordinary Fridays back, but ordinarily peaceful. Not this ordinary state of things we needed to adapt to and can't wait to put in our past.
If you're living another Friday in a peaceful country, please try to recognize the greatness of it. The privilege of living it. Make the most of your Friday, make it special as it should always be. Even if you don't have anything special in mind for today.