What is normal?

Is it normal when people eat bread with chocolate sprinkles for lunch? Is it normal that men are around 185 centimeters tall? Is it normal when it’s 10 degrees Celsius outside?

These things may be common in The Netherlands in March of 2022, but are they normal? Of course there’s no such thing as ‘normal’, because the ‘norm’ differs per place and per time. What is normal in The Netherlands may be freaky in Japan. And what is normal in 2022 was very weird in 1922.

How about our body temperature? Surely, biology has fixed norms, right? Well, today I discovered otherwise. It turns out that 37 degrees Celsius is no longer the average human body temperature. In fact, it hasn’t been for a while, but we are only now finding out.

Our new ‘normal’ body temperature is actually 36.6 degrees Celsius, according to an American study. Apparently in the past 150 years, our bodies have adapted to better healthcare and more comfortable homes. We have literally become colder. Isn’t history interesting?

The more I read about history, the more I realize that the way things are now are not at all how they have always been. For my generation, it’s easy to think that peace is normal. When in fact, war has been the norm for the past couple of thousand years, and peace has been the exception. I hope things get back to being not normal.