about being normal
The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.
My perceptions of normal have been hit hard on two occasions. The first time was as a teenager identifying the only normal parents in my circle of friends. A few years later it became clear that they had a highly dysfunctional and messed up relationship that the whole family had been hiding for years. The perfectly relaxed and happy couple was an illusion.
The second occasion was when I found out that my very normal and brilliantly sociable friend, who could make anyone feel at ease in any company, built a facade of easy chatty behaviour around an almost panic-stricken need to entertain others and fill gaps in conversation. The perfectly relaxed and happy person was an illusion.
So, normal people are an illusion. What about normal behaviour? I’m afraid I think it might be mindless. I’ve never understood why people want to settle down in stable jobs seeing the same people every day of their lives and wishing their lives away to retirement. I’ve never understood why people spend so much money on clothes that go beyond the basics of comfort. I’ve never understood why so many women spend so much time reading magazines with seriously dull content that seem to give them hang-ups about seriously trivial matters. I’ve never understood how most men can get so obsessively fascinated watching other men kick a ball about a bit of grass. If all of these behaviours are normal, normal is weird.
I guess in terms of evolution, group social behaviour is important for humans, so we all have a strong urge to fit in and be accepted by the bigger human group. This entails covering up things that might make us different, so that the most ‘normal’ people are the ones who are best at hiding things, and adopting behaviours that demonstrate we are normal, in spite of the fact that these things are often clearly odd. In the end I suspect we’re all really rather weird, just like Alfred Adler suggests above.
Normal formal. Ubiquity is boring.
LikeLike
Why formal? Just for the fine rhyme line?
LikeLike
Yeah, it was early, brain hadn’t kicked over
LikeLike
Great post! And I really like that Adler-quote. 🙂
I have had the same experiences with other people. Sometimes I have even wondered why I felt so keen to see happy people and perfect couples. Now I usually think there’s more to it than what I could see at first glance.
It certainly makes me feel better when other people mention it’s rather silly to fill out questionnaires in magazines to get to know yourself. Or worse, to make you feel insecure.
I am not sure if men’s obsession with football is equally bad or not. It just doesn’t have anything to do with me. At all. 🙂
LikeLike
Thanks! Women’s magazines are a mystery to me. I abandoned them in my teens and just don’t get their appeal at all. Unfortunately my boyfriend is one of those mindless males with an odd football obsession – there’s just no explaining the stupidity to him. 🙂
LikeLike
I find that since I don’t engage in conversations reliving highlights of men kicking a ball about a bit of grass, I have a more difficult time engaging in small-talk with my business associates. Like it or not, that has a bearing on my career opportunities. There are costs for not being normal. Or, rather, for not appearing to be normal. Evolution knew what it was doing.
LikeLike
That’s an interesting point – the cost of not fitting in and looking normal. Maybe no men actually like football …
LikeLike
I thought it was me who felt this way about 22 adult men running around a leather ball for 90 minutes. I get shocked when all around me guys are trying to outdo each other in conversations on whose team is winning! Real madness. Normal is boring.
I like my office but I don’t want to retire there 🙂
LikeLike
Total madness! I guess you’re in your 20s, although I could be completely wrong. I think people enjoy work in their 20s – it’s new, they’re enthusiastic and eager to succeed. Then at some point in their 30s they’re trapped in the economic level of security their work provides and may also have a family to provide for, so keenly feel the limitations. That’s when they just seem to start to aim directly for retirement. It’s weird. People like geneticfractals manage to avoid that trap but they’re few and far between.
LikeLike
You are slightly wrong. Am 30 and working on firing my boss sooner and starting my own business. I don’t want to feel like am trapped in a corner and become part of the furniture in the office
LikeLike
Very, very good post, Violet. Spot-on.
LikeLike
Thanks Jim, glad you like it!
LikeLike
But if we’re all really weird, doesn’t being weird become normal?
I have also seen how much people who seem to have healthy inner lives (I won’t say normal, because these kind of people are pretty rare) actually have lots of issues. The more cheerful they act, the more issues in general, though they are exceptions. So your diagnose seems to fit my personal experience.
LikeLike
Not quite, because we are talking of being conventional: we are weird, but we like the same masks. And- I think we like to see a way of being, and your personal idiosyncratic way of being has not been trodden before.
LikeLike
I think that’s especially true in the USA – it’s the capital of cheerful masks of normality covering utter weirdness.
LikeLike
I am definitely not normal, and this has resulted in a panic-stricken desperate attempt to deny that and appear normal. Only in middle age am I escaping that, slowly.
LikeLike
There’s a delicate balance between appreciating our personal idiosyncrasies and just wanting to blend in. It’s easy to get the theory of ‘I don’t care what other people think’ but always more difficult to live it.
LikeLike
Miss Wisp, please don’t try to be ‘normal’ … you obviously have a mind of your own and the intelligence to use it. The above post is one of the most powerful bits of writing I have ever seen—not in what you said so much as what you didn’t say but which is nevertheless there—screaming—between the lines.
You’ve heard this a thousand times: be yourself.
And spit in the eye of the first (there will be endless many of them) bastard who tries to lift himself up by putting you down.
LikeLike
Again, I don’t really know what you mean here. Is it sarcasm, is it a rabid dog ranting? And I don’t know what’s screaming between the lines. I guess that I’m not normal in a lot of respects, but not in any way that bothers me, or seemingly other people. I certainly won’t be spitting on anyone, but I do like poking people in the eye when they annoy me. 🙂
LikeLike
This rabid dog doesn’t rant at Miss Wisp, far from it~! Sarcasm is a tool reserved entirely for the good folks who deserve it.
A well deserved poke in the eye is as good as a spit any day, don’t hold back.
LikeLike