What is Normal?
Is There Even Such a Thing?
I didn’t grow up in a “normal” household. My dad was a religious cult leader who heard voices and believed that he was handpicked to serve as the last prophet of the end times.
He was so sure that he was the chosen one that he managed to convince around a hundred people to follow him.
His followers came from “normal” homes, but were seduced to leave their roots and traditions behind to follow my dad who had never fit into society.
But when I heard snippets about the family lives of these various followers, I had to wonder even as a kid if that was what constituted “normal”?
Eventually, I left home and the religion with a shoe box of personal belongings, no car, no job, no money, no civilian friends, and tried to become “normal”, like mainstream Americans.
I didn’t try to become normal like a Japanese citizen or normal like an east Indian girl. I knew so little about other cultures at the time. I assumed my culture was IT.
They were too far off the map for me at the time.
After a few years of trying to navigate the civilian world, as uncomfortable as it was for me, I slowly began to realize that the new “normal” that I had thrown myself into was just another form of quicksand. I was being sucked under by cultural expectations and limited by silly rules. By and large, people were no happier than the cult members in my dad’s church. They were simply doing what was expected of them no matter how pointless much of it was.
All these years later, I’ve concluded that there isn’t such a thing as “normal”.
Society does an almost adequate job of holding it all together but in the end misses the point. Rather than providing the glue to help people get through the challenges of life, they restrain even squelch individual expression. The support that would be so helpful to a developing member of society is denied if that person veers off the accepted path.
The end product is a mass of neurotic creatures that have missed their chance to experience life.
Those that have taken a chance, even a tiny chance, to do things a little different, pay a high price. Just like when I turned my back on religion and the cult, people who choose to alter the expectations of the culture they were gifted due to the sheer lottery of birth are punished.
I was disowned by my parents and excommunicated from the church.
But plenty of other people have been persecuted, ostracized, ignored, harassed, and even killed for daring to question status quo. It’s just not tolerated. If you want to belong, there’s a price to pay.
Just be normal, they tell you.
But if you’re even remotely aware of someone other than yourself, it becomes very apparent that nobody is truly normal. And I contend that if we could get behind closed doors or even better inside someone’s head, we’d be surprised at the very least and often shocked to the very core of our existence as to what we would find.
They seemed so normal, the neighbors down the street, the bus driver, your doctor until you got to know them. Right?
Which brings me to the many, many restrictions that humans place on one another. Many of which are pointless and hurtful, but they do it anyway and most people follow along.
So, you can be a bright, contributing member of the team, but if you fall in love with a person of your own gender, you’re ostracized.
Not that loving anyone, no matter who they may be, should be a problem. There’s so little real love floating around in the air that you’d think genuine affection would be honored, promoted, even encouraged. But it’s not.
If you’re different, you’re suspicious.
Something as basic as what you wear makes you stand out in a crowd and not in a good way. That’s why we all dress pretty much alike, live in houses that look mostly alike, eat the same foods, practice the same religions, listen to popular music, have the same pastimes, and enjoy the same tv shows and books. Fads are such a common aspect of what we like to think is personal choice when we’re really just following the pack.
And what happens to those with brilliant new ideas?
Oh, my! No matter how life changing the idea may be, it’s going to be an uphill battle against large swaths of resistance until the new idea is finally accepted by the majority. It’s also highly possible that a very good idea is completely wasted on the tribe. Nikola Tesla’s ideas certainly encountered such resistance. A brilliant man whose very existence challenged the status quo.
How many amazing ideas have died along with the brilliant person who generated solutions and opportunities?
I daresay all new ideas no matter how amazing are deemed impossible and too far ahead of their time by the ordinary people who merely get up every morning to worry about whether their asses look big in their new pants or what they’re going to have for supper. They’re not only proud representatives of what’s considered normal, but also eager to throw a sidelong glance or an uncomplimentary remark at anyone who’s the tiniest bit different.
We easily end up wasting our lives.
And if that’s not bad enough, we often end up cheating everyone else out of a better life. Because the very structure of the tribe is given a strict definition of what’s normal and what isn’t, we stick with old, outdated ideas long past their shelf life.
We’re offered a way forward, but the person who’s making the offer seems like a weirdo because they’re different from the tribal definition of what constitutes normal. We vote against our own best interests and follow along even if we’re miserable.
Yet, there is no normal.
It’s all a construct. We didn’t come into the world with anything in mind. Centuries ago, someone worked it all out for us. And, although Japanese culture is different than Swedish culture and French culture is different than Arabic culture and Colombian culture is different than American culture, none are “normal”, because there is no normal.
Which should tell us that the sky is the limit but that’s never the message we get from the tribe.
It’s strange, isn’t it? Yet, here we are living in a day and age of unprecedented technological advancements but still restricted by what our ancestors considered normal.
I’ve tried the subculture of a religious cult and the mainstream American culture and neither one has suited my needs.
Although I know the tribe is essential to society, I also have determined that I have a strong preference for flying solo. But that’s another topic for another day.
Flying solo in a world without borders. Now that’s an article just waiting to be written.
Teresa is an author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
