Columnist Susan Snyder: What is normal going to be like?

Friday, Sept. 28, 2001 | 4:24 a.m.

THE AMERICAN flag lapel pin presents a dilemma.

How long should I wear it? Until Oct. 11? Forever? Until things get back to normal?

When is that?

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack, our real dilemma may not revolve around how to get back to normal. It may instead mean figuring out what we will make permanent once we arrive there.

Over the past couple of years we've read report after report about how overworked the average American has become. We take fewer vacations than the rest of the world. When we do take them we can't leave the pagers, laptop computers and cellular telephones at home.

But now we're distracted workers. Frightful images of the World Trade Center towers collapsing are being replaced by fears of infection with poisonous creepy-crawlies we can't see.

We keep one eye on the Internet or television and discuss the latest developments with our co-workers. We do our work, but there's this "thing" lurking in the background.

A friend of mine who publishes a horticulture newspaper says she has a hard time concentrating even though she works alone without the distraction of co-worker conversation. Her work, she says, feels somewhat insignificant in the grand scheme.

The grand scheme. Now there's something you don't see every day. At least, many of us didn't see it before.

But we do now. We wonder how we fit there. And we ponder that question as we sit quietly at our desks "getting back to work."

Rest assured life will get back to normal, and for most of us it probably won't look much different than it did before Sept. 11, says Justin Schulz, a Littleton, Colo., psychologist and corporate consultant who specializes in workplace and post-traumatic stress.

"Some of us may be a lot more appreciate of things," Schulz said. "I hear a lot of people wanting to spend more time with their families and their close friends. And that's adding to people's reluctance to travel (for work). It's just not as important as it was."

Will it last? Is it be enough to elicit permanent changes in America's workaholic culture?

Schulz doesn't think so.

"There is a counterbalance," he said. "The economic downturn will play into it. That's going to keep the change from being clear-cut."

What a shame.

It would be nice to see something decent come of this tragic chain of events. Something more permanent than a telethon or blood drive.

Human beings need conflict. It's what keeps us going. All the best books, movies and discussions are peppered with conflict. When we don't have enough of it we create it for ourselves -- at work, in traffic, on the sidelines of our kids' soccer matches.

We're snotty with the person in the grocery express line with 16 items. We sit on the bumpers of people we think drive too slowly. We bicker over what someone parks in his own driveway. And we sue each other over every conceivable trifle.

Before Sept. 11 we were secure, all right. Secure in our arrogance.

Not anymore.

Now we are distracted. We are afraid. We are clutching Old Glory like a security blanket, learning more than we want to know about anthrax and small pox and wondering how we fit into a global war on terrorism that's being waged in the name of national security.

What is normal going to be like? Maybe we're looking in the wrong place for that answer.

Maybe the "national security" we seek doesn't come from strict airport measures, clandestine federal investigations and blowing less-fortunate countries off the map.

Maybe it's something we give ourselves in the way we frame our lives and treat each other all the time, not just when we're united in crisis.

So I figure it's time to put the flag pin back into the jewelry box. Normal isn't about a date on the calendar, and patriotism isn't about what we wear.

Both are about what we do for each other every single day.

No matter what else happens.