Humans are so resilient. After early shocks to us, individually or collectively, humans find a new equilibrium, developing a new normal. If the disruption is not too great, say a coronavirus pandemic, kids, teachers, businesses, fire fighters and even healthcare workers develop alternatives that in time stop being new and become routine.

It is two years ago last week that the world – the world – ground to a halt, everyone – even New Zealand – floored by the coronavirus pandemic. Locked down was the term, the policy and the reality. People rushed to buy toilet paper. There was a photo of empty shelves at Pioneer Market in the March 11, 2020 Weekly News.

A year ago people from Skagit County and beyond flocked to La Conner Drug Store for their first vaccination. See the photo on this week's page 5 of that March 17, 2021 event.

And today? Washingtonians are finishing their first maskless week since Gov. Jay Inslee imposed restrictions last September. No state or country has licked the pandemic. In Skagit County, the 14-day new case rate has dropped to 175 per 100,000 resident for the period ending March 5. In 2020 the bar was 25 new cases in order to gain normalcy. Clearly society has achieved normalcy without getting to normal.

But all of a sudden pandemic worries seem so yesterday, so distant, so past.

Now real destruction and death are raining down on the people of Ukraine, which until Feb. 24 was a nation of 40 million people. Now it is an invaded nation of refugees leaving and soldiers, healthcare workers, fire fighters, journalists, and politicians – and more and more wounded and dead. This human caused carnage does not have an endgame as Russian President Vladimir Putin shows barbarians wear suits and have seemingly limitless modern armaments to unleash.

Putin has the world’s attention. Nations are wheeling and dealing to place tourniquets wherever money flows out of Russia, including fossil fuels, including gasoline. In the U.S. gas prices are skyrocketing, but all of a sudden it is not President Joe Biden’s inflation. All of a sudden, maybe shutting off the oil spigot and plugging into solar power is life affirming in the most fundamental, literal way.

What if our western, democratic way of life is preserved – will be preserved – only by breaking our addiction from fossil fuels? Now empathy and sympathy seems to be running high and there is tolerance for high gas prices because the cause is so obvious and the war so brutal. Will the anger and disgust at Putin’s inhumanity be the catalyst to fundamentally change our fossil fuel guzzling ways?

A new normal to live into is to have our eyes open and minds engaged when democracy is attacked abroad or at home. Once people grasp the facts and are able to be relaxed with the ongoing complexity of living into the process of the future unfolding, maybe we will be able to hold on to accepting ongoing high prices as a war related cost and hold onto to knowing it is insignificant compared to the reality Ukrainians are facing.

The new normal remains to be reached. We can create a future of higher prices at gas stations that most of us pass by in electric vehicles and have homes heated by solar generated electricity. It will not be easy or cheap but has the added allure of reducing the chance of oil being used as a weapon.

Many of us are old enough to remember that tactic first used almost 50 years ago with the Arab oil embargo. The sooner we end our addiction to oil-fueled cars the sooner we can get out from under the thumb of leverage holding autocrats and corporations.