In 2019, Sally Rooney’s coming-of-age relationship novel, Normal People, easily made my top books of the year list. But at the time I only wrote a few sentences about why I found it so page-turning and powerful. Now only a year later, Lenny Abrahamson’s adaptation has debuted on Hulu, bringing a whole new audience to the story of Connell and Marianne.

Reading descriptions of either the book or the series, it’s not hard to imagine people jumping to the conclusion that this is a work of teen melodrama, and not for them. I should know: after seeing the trailers, I almost skipped the show DESPITE loving the book, because the marketing didn’t feel enough like the story I’d read and loved. On the surface, the series appeared exactly like the sort of schmaltzy romance the book did such a good job dissecting.

I’m pleased to report that the show, like the book, achieves something much more special. Something more complex and with greater depth than a will-they-or-won’t-they courtship drama. Though pretty quickly in, you find out they definitely will, then won’t, then will again, a lot, on and off for years. Which is more to the point of the project.

Sure, there’s a bit of that youthful tendency for the characters to think every setback is earth-shattering, or to make basic relationship mistakes that frustrate the more mature among us to no end. ( SWEET DANGLING CHAIN, CONNELL, JUST TELL HER WHAT YOU REALLY WANT.) But both the show and the book capture the unique intensity of first loves with such sensitivity, and then interrogates what t means to us so skillfully, that it becomes much more than a question of whether two characters get their happily ever after. Because as most of us know: they won’t. That’s not how life works. Rarely does a first great love become a lifelong one, even if at the time it feels like losing it means the end of the world.

What makes Normal People so smart and so powerful is that it’s not really about whether two people end up together. It’s more interested in how certain people — whether loves, or friends, or family (or that one asshole you’re not sure why anyone keeps inviting to parties, JAMIE) — these people leave their marks on us. They unlock something we’ve felt we had inside ourselves just waiting to be discovered, and they shape the people we eventually become.

It’s specifically not a love story for the ages, because these are Normal People. Normal People feel weird and misunderstood until finally someone sees us. Normal People fall in love for the first time (even if it’s not always romantic love), and they feel changed, even if that love doesn’t last, because it’s normal to screw it up. And in most cases, Normal People move on… past the loves and friendships lost, and toward an uncertain future, as best as they know how.

Who are the people that changed you the most, or set you on the course to who you are today?

What parts of who you are now would you attribute to those past relationships?

How might you be different if you’d never had those people in your life?

Heroes they’re not. But when profits and progressive policies align… POW!

Tech companies come out against restrictive immigration laws. Disappointed CEOs abandon their seats on a national business council as the government walks away from climate accords. The normally corrupt NCAA moves a basketball tournament from a state looking to impose discriminatory bathroom laws.

More recently, large retailers have decided — of their own accord, without any law imposed upon them — to raise age minimums and stop selling military-style assault rifles. Even on a micro scale, after incidents like Charlottesville, employers have fired people after being notified of those employees’ hateful online speech.

To be fair, it’s not all rosy. Some businesses have fought for their right not to provide birth control as part of employee health insurance, or their right not to serve LGBT customers. And of course, there’s Citizens United.

But the trend does seem to be toward (most) companies coming down on the side of (mostly) progressive issues. In part, as this article reminds us, because:

Politics is competitive, but the competition is constrained—by time (e.g., elections only happen every two, four, or six years), by geography (e.g., the gerrymandering of districts), and by partisanship, in which every issue often boils down to “the other side is worse.” Many companies cannot rely on time, geography, or negative advertising to save them. Every week is a primary for a consumer brand; the global nature of business exposes companies to more rivals; and no company can thrive by making nothing and investing exclusively in hostile marketing. “Politicians assume they can wait out the outrage, but national companies have to respond to the immediacy of demand.”

So what role can corporations play in creating social change? Should they be doing this more, or less?

What issues are they best suited to affect? What issues do we want them to stay out of completely?

What pressures can people put on them to be better “citizens”?

Other than “you’re fatter”.

Running into former coworkers you haven’t seen in years, changing jobs or cities after extended periods of routine and complacency, those miserable years when a high school reunion rolls around to remind you of your mortality — there are these rare instances where you’re faced with thinking about how much you’ve changed, whether intentionally or without even realizing. A mini version of this happens around New Years every year, but widen the scale and it gets a little weird and frightening. Or impressive and exciting! I guess that depends on you.

How would people have described you 10 years ago, and how is that different from how they might describe you today?

What would be different if the person describing you, then or now, is someone that knows you well versus someone who just met you?

Which qualities do you wish you still had from the past? Which are you glad to have gained or lost since?