Boiling Normal
How the unthinkable became Tuesday
The temperature rose so gradually.
Each degree, we adjusted. Loosened our collar. Rolled up our sleeves. Told ourselves this was still manageable.
Now we’re in rolling boil — and everyone’s acting like this is fine.
I’m writing this for the person who woke up sometime in the last few years and realized the world had become unrecognizable. Maybe you’ve done some inner work. Read some books. Developed what you thought was a pretty solid grip on reality. You consider yourself reasonable. Thoughtful. Someone who can hold complexity.
And now you’re watching things that would have been career-ending scandals a decade ago treated as background noise. You’re watching positions that would have disqualified anyone from public life become campaign platforms. You’re watching conversations happen in mainstream spaces that, not long ago, would have been confined to the fever swamps.
You’re not crazy. The water really did get this hot.
What the Frog Sees
Let’s name a few degrees of the boil, just to confirm we’re in the same pot.
A president with more felony convictions than most crime syndicates. Still running. Still viable. This is Tuesday.
People in boats — refugees, desperate humans — executed without trial, without evidence, cheered as policy. A solution. This is Tuesday.
Public figures making the sexual exploitation of children sound like a reasonable position to debate. Not monsters in hidden forums — faces on screens, treated as legitimate voices. This is Tuesday.
Most people don’t trust the news anymore. And here’s the thing: they’re probably right not to. We’ve been lied to so consistently, across so many sources, that skepticism feels like the only sane response. Except now we’ve lost the shared ground where “what happened” could be agreed upon.
The Overton window — that invisible boundary defining acceptable discourse — hasn’t just shifted. It’s been blown off its hinges. Things that would have ended careers, ended presidencies, ended any claim to basic human decency, are now debating points. Policy positions. Talking heads shrugging on screens.
And here we are. Still going to work. Still scrolling. Still trying to figure out what to make for dinner.
The Mirror
Here’s what I’ve started noticing — and this part scares me more than the headlines.
It’s not just out there. It’s in here.
The same fracturing I see in the culture, I find in my own nervous system. The same gaslighting that happens on news networks, I catch happening between my own ears. The same inability to agree on basic reality that poisons public discourse — I feel it when I try to trust my own perceptions.
I used to say reality is my friend. Meaning: I’d rather know the hard truth than live in comfortable illusion. Give me the difficult fact over the pleasant fiction any day.
But reality itself has become a survival tool with grease on it. I can’t hold it. Every time I think I’ve got a grip, it slips.
What actually happened? Which version is the manipulation? Who’s telling the truth? Is anyone?
The shared sense of what’s real has fractured so completely that even trying to stay oriented is exhausting. It takes effort just to remember what you saw with your own eyes, when a thousand voices are explaining why you didn’t really see it.
Reality: may you rest in peace.
This isn’t just a political problem. It’s a psychological one. When you can’t trust the ground, your body goes into a particular kind of alert — not the acute danger of a threat you can face, but the chronic stress of instability itself. You’re not fleeing a predator. You’re trying to stand on sand that keeps shifting.
The boiling water isn’t just in the news. It’s in our marriages. Our friendships. Our inner lives. The same pattern that normalizes cruelty out there normalizes it in here — the harsh internal voice, the impossible standards, the sense that softness is weakness and vulnerability will get you killed.
The Third Option
There’s a part of me that wants to keep watching. Tracking. Making sure I don’t miss the next thing. Staying vigilant because the temperature could rise another degree at any moment and I need to know.
I understand that part. It’s trying to protect me.
But hypervigilance isn’t the answer to a slow boil. That part is exhausted.
There’s another part that wants to check out entirely. Stop reading. Stop knowing. Find a corner where none of this touches me. Tend my garden. Delete the apps. Pretend the world ends at my property line.
I understand that part too. But numbing isn’t the answer either. Checked-out people don’t make good neighbors. And the cost of not-knowing shows up eventually, in other forms.
What I’m finding is a third option. Not vigilance. Not numbing. Something like grounded discernment.
Knowing what I can know. Trusting what I can trust. And letting the rest be uncertain.
The Irreducibly Real
Here’s where I put my feet.
Warm water in the morning. Steam rising. The particular silence of the house before anyone else wakes up.
The neighbor’s dogs, who greet me like I’m the best thing that’s happened all day. Unconditional. Simple. Their joy isn’t complicated by opinion or agenda.
The smell of a December Southern California beach town. Salt and eucalyptus. Something slightly rotting at the tideline. Crisp air in my nostrils. The ocean doesn’t care what’s happening in Washington.
Moments with friends where we drop the performance and just share the ride for a while. “Can you believe this?” Yes. Yes I can. We can hold it together.
These aren’t escapes. They’re anchors. The irreducibly real. The things that can’t be spun. The experiences that don’t require interpretation. The ground that doesn’t shift.
This isn’t denial. I’m not pretending the water isn’t boiling. I’m finding the places that don’t depend on the temperature.
What Holds You
The water is going to keep getting hotter. That’s my best guess. The forces that profit from destabilization aren’t going to voluntarily dial it back.
So the question isn’t how to stop the boil. Not yet. Not at the individual level.
The question is how to live in the boil without going numb, without going crazy, and without losing your footing.
For me, the answer has something to do with that third thing — not vigilance, not numbness, but presence. Staying connected to what’s real, even when “what’s real” has become a contested term. Finding the other frogs who are also awake. Sharing the ride.
And maybe, in the process, discovering that we’re not actually frogs. That there’s something in us that doesn’t boil. Something that can witness the temperature without becoming it.
But here’s what I’ve learned, both personally and in working with others: seeing the problem clearly is necessary, but it isn’t sufficient.
You can understand exactly how hot the water has gotten. You can name the pattern. You can recognize the boil. And still not know what to actually do.
What comes next is something practical: scaffolding. Not a grand political solution. Not spiritual bypass. And not individual heroics.
Scaffolding is what holds you while things are hard. It’s the structures, relationships, practices, and resources that keep you steady enough to navigate stress and crisis without collapsing or fragmenting. It’s not the healing work itself — it’s what makes healing work possible.
The water is hot. You’re not crazy. Let’s find out what stays real.
If you’re curious where this pattern lives in your own life — where the boil has gotten under your skin and where you’re still finding solid ground — the Unveiling Self Assessment maps exactly that.
It’s free, it’s private, and most people sit with their results for days.
New here? How to Read This Substack — three doors in, depending on where you’re starting.