‘Normal’ is getting a little shaken up and it is not always received so graciously. We take what we consider to be normal quite personally. We like ‘normal’ where it counts like having normal blood pressure or anything that does not cause for alarm. But if it is tampered with, it can at times bring out the worst in us.
Our quarrels over normalcy have gone on for eons. Mainly because the question of normality has not only been inconsistent but contradictory. What used to be normal a century ago or even a decade ago is now bizarre and sometimes down-right unfathomable.
But whose normal is normal?
Google will tell us it is something “typical, common or customary”. However, we consider normal as something ‘true’ or ‘right way’. Along with in-built biases compiled by observing and mimicking our surroundings; most of our ‘normal’ is taught through our countries, societies, cultures, science, medicine, education, and religion.
We do our best to follow what is generally a consensual universal norm. However, our earliest habits and practices of ‘normal’ are picked up from our parents.
Born and raised in a western country with heavy European influences and background, I was quickly introduced to all my abnormalities during elementary school. Speaking another language was the obvious distinction to the oddity that was me and listening to teachers struggle to say my full ethnic name was mortifying.
Lunch breaks were a different kind of struggle. Pulling out a fried chicken liver and onion sandwich around other western children whose popular lunch meals were the simple: vegemite, peanut butter or the much loved ‘fairy bread’ (butter with cake candy sprinkles) sandwiches was daunting.
And there was no point arguing or pleading for cake candy sprinkles on buttered bread with a European mother whose ‘normal’ was feeding her children large, hearty, full meals; just shy of packing a whole lamb roast right out of the oven. Oh, the awkward torture of being different and outside the norm!
But every now and then I would sample these societal normalcies. There were only a few rare occasions where I would not devour my lunch in one gulp. For a short moment, I would feel like a normal western child. Maybe even a slightly upgraded version. My mother would meet me at the gate to bring me a BOUGHT hamburger. A giant, meaty, hot burger from the popular, local burger shop whose strong, meaty, ‘western’ smell would arouse their appetites. I relished the look of their envious faces as if I were enjoying the velvety smooth mush of a crème brulee.
Over time, multicultural awareness has expanded elevating our curiosity and appreciation of varying foods, clothes, dialects, and cultural practices.
As we expand and evolve, our exposure to new things, new ways and new practices bring about new normalcies. However, since normal is defined as something established and habitual, how normal is normal when it is ever changing?
Normalcies we become accustomed to are that which behave in a similar manner. It feels safe because it comes with familiarity and stability. For this reason, many of us are willing not only to deny eccentricities but go as far as abolishing them. We hold tight to our ideas of normal that we have a tendency viewing anything outside of these boundaries as defective. Since we like to feel safe and part of a unit, we typically embrace our established normalcies fiercely.
Therefore, often the way normal and abnormal is construed is largely due to society’s fear. When something looks, sounds, feels, and behaves different to that which we have adapted, we can view it as problematic.
But what are we afraid of?
We ultimately worry about how it may affect and infect us and our families. We worry that accepting something outside of our programmed ways may spread and swallow us whole. We worry that it may shift what is currently dubbed as ‘normal’ into a minority perspective. We worry about being the minority! Some of us even believe that it is the devil morphing itself into humans attempting to summon us into the gates of hell.
Often, the longer we have practiced a certain way of living and thinking, we do not care much for change. We believe strongly in our compiled rights and wrongs and hold firmly to our beliefs. It is also predominantly why there are such large generation gaps.
Difference of opinion and outlook on life is forever changing and while youth rebel against the confinements of normal, older generations clutch tightly onto them. Our juniors are also more accepting and embrace difference whereas seniors tend to stand in judgment and criticism of these diversities. Until one day, they too will be required to let go of the normalcies they have embraced and become accustomed to.
However, it is not about customizing our normal to please the majority, it is about our attitude toward difference.
While we attempt to extract the fundamentals of normalcies, established normalcies leave no room for diversity. In fact, they get in the way of our authenticity.
When a child displays increased energy, we label them as having attention deficit disorder. When someone is not of the ideal, recommended weight for their height, we label them as fat and unhealthy. When someone’s romantic attraction is of the same sex, we call them gay.
Sometimes, what we justify as normal goes as far as to medicate and attempt to fix healthy behavior over disfavored personality type.
Sometimes, what we justify as normal goes as far as to humiliate and attempt to fix a healthy body over disfavored physical appearance.
Sometimes, what we justify as normal goes as far as to reject and attempt to outcast an individual entirely over disfavored sexual orientation.
We become so ashamed of our quirks and eccentricities we exhaust immense energy trying to alter and silence them. We do our best to perfectly camouflage or mold into the criteria of normal. We keep quiet about our children who do not fit into the social, intellectual, or physical norm and loathe ourselves when at times feel embarrassed by them. We closet who we are for fear of rejection. Some of us even lock ourselves away from the world outside by keeping interactions as minimal as possible.
Unfortunately, many who failed at being the manufactured normal, cannot bear the burden of internal bondage and have ran out of façade fuel find escapism through means of suicide as the alternative to liberating this inner being.
Concealing our uniqueness generates rage, deep sadness, and fear – emotions that erupt when pure energy is compressed and contained from its brilliance. And when these emotions seep out, it looks like mental instability, anxiety, and depression. It looks like something abnormal.
But at what point does ‘normal’ become our objective? At what cost do we stop being who we are and behave like they are?
At some point, denying and resisting our light will find its way out. It begs to shine. It wants to be present. It yearns to simply be.
It can be quite exhausting taming and training extraordinary to become ordinary. Our inner splendor will not surrender or comply to the confinements of human habits and logic. It cannot be less than that which it has expanded to be.
Ultimately, no individual is normal. Some of us may be masterful chameleons; brilliantly able to adapt and change to our environment. Some are outstanding performers; able to fool the best of us. And some may have convinced themselves with absolute certainty of their preconditioned perceptions and beliefs as ‘the way’ and ‘the truth’.
However, without the fabricated layers, we are all weirdly, uniquely, and wonderfully abnormal. In fact, the only constant is diversity.
As infinite creators, there is nothing stable about us. Our imagination is boundless. For this reason we are ever moving, bending, flexing, and changing to the rhythm of our own songs.
Our inner extraordinaire is too bright, too brilliant, too fierce and too radiant to be concealed or tamed.
‘Normal’ should not be our objective nor should living within the boundaries of societal norms.
Do not box yourself into behaviors, opinions, beliefs and perceptions that are expected and accepted by the majority.
Do not take personally the criticisms of others. It is only those that judge the heaviest that are most envious of your freedom and most afraid to be their unique selves.
Never should someone else dictate how we express our beauty. Never should we require external validation of our profoundness. Light is light. Even with the thickest layer of clouds hiding the sun’s rays, it will maintain its glow.
Normalcies leave no room for diversity and without diversity there is no expansion. Only when we truly understand that diversity is part of expansion would we be able to embrace it.
Most of us never feel completely whole or enough, when on the contrary; we are abundance.
Insufficiency is not our dilemma; it is suppression of our divinity!
Ultimately, we are all magnificent colors of energy, each a unique, individual contrasting shade that when blended emit a most brilliant light.
Wow, just wow. You have a gift with writing that I never knew Evy. This topic hits home for me as a parent of a child who is what many call different including myself when first learning of it, maybe can easily be diagnosed if we take him back to the doctors. Over time though he has proven to me that he is actually unique and brilliant, even beyond my imagination, and he has gifts that many of us can’t come close to. But still what we are programmed to believe is normal does get in the way a lot, and we have gone through a lot over the years but I’m constantly learning how to deal with it and your article brought me to tears because it hits home and it was something I needed to hear. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and keep doing your thing.