Normal. Sounds innocent doesn’t it? Sounds like a nice word to describe a safe environment or situation that does not present us with a sense of anxiety or concern. And therein lies the problem. Normal is a misused and dangerous word that needs to be rethought to suit our modern day where anxieties abound because we compare our ourselves to others.
This would be ok if we didn’t inherently find ourselves coming up short in those comparisons. We compare ourselves to the perfect people on facebook, but we also kind of disbelieve others when they express their issues. We even say it’s ok for others to have issues, but we don’t treat ourselves kindly when we feel depressed, sad, fearful or anxious.
We think its not normal to feel this way, so instead of spending our energies looking forward, we focus on our inadequacies, not only because we don’t live up to our own perfect expectations, but also because we are frequently judged when we go outside the norm. This judgement is not only by strangers, bosses, media or others who don’t know us properly but also by friends and family who sometimes can’t see beyond their own normal.
Normal: conforming to a standard, usual, typical or expected state
Still sounds pretty harmless doesn’t it? But underneath this ordinary, everyday, routine, traditional, established, accustomed, expected, standard (all synonyms for normal) word … is our world.
And in our world there is no normal, there is only MY normal, or perhaps YOUR normal. We live in a world of dichotomies that mess with our head. Because what might be normal for you, may not be normal for me. And more and more on a global scale this causes polarity in thinking leading to extremism, bullying and discrimination. On a personal scale it gives rise to thoughts of not being good enough, not having enough, not doing enough, not BEING enough.
Normal is a lot of things but it is most definitely not something we should judge ourselves or others on. Using the word normal implies a specific location within a range, where the only place that it’s ok to live is with the majority. And there is also an implication that if something is not normal, it must be abnormal. Is abnormal really the opposite of normal. If cancer free is the normal state, does that mean a person with cancer is abnormal. Abnormal is an extreme and it’s usually and reasonably associated with a less than preferable condition or environment. But let’s not use it as a closed minded, discriminating and alienating judgement.
I have recently gone through an alternative medical treatment in India, (yes I know, that’s not normal! Unless you live in India, which is kind of the point I am making). While many have been supportive, most, including myself, are surprised that there is a treatment in India that is more successful, and less risky, than what Western medicine can provide.
While here I’ve made friends with others going through treatment, locals living in my area and a bunch of people as passionate as me about baseball. And I have a list a mile long of comparisons where I think something is out of the ordinary and for them it’s normal, and vice versa.
For instance, it’s very common for Indians to have “tender coconut.” For some it’s an everyday ritual. The vendor chops the top of a young coconut, you drink the water, then they cut it open and you eat the flesh. Healthy, delicious and very good for hydration, hence the rest of the world putting into plastic bottles and selling it in multi-national supermarkets. Oh and it costs somewhere between 20 and 70 cents depending on the time of year.
You may ask why I am using this as an example of “normal”. It’s not the drinking of the coconut water, but the expression on my Indian friends face when I told her we don’t do this in Australia. “How on earth do you hydrate properly?” she exclaimed in horror! Tender coconut is something that is available on every other street in Bangalore, and she could not even fathom what a world without them would look like.
This is a fairly innocent example, but it gets much worse. For some reason people fear what we do not know, and when we do not know, we make it up. Fake news is becoming more and more common. And if we want others to feel the same fear as we do, we point out how that situation is not normal, because it feels safe for people to be in the middle of a bunch of like-minded people. The cool kids, the in crowd, the status quo. If you go outside the normal you risk at the minimum being laughed at, and at its worst being ostracised.
Unless of course, you create an extreme that a whole bunch of people want to aspire to. So that then becomes the new normal. “You don’t watch Game of Thrones? Whaaat?”
When going through our medical treatment, each of us patients would explain our scenario, to either the doctor or each other, and ask “is this normal?’. Underlying this question is a huge amount of fear – what if its not working, what if I end up in the 1% who it doesn’t work for, why am I different to them, whats wrong with me? In this treatment there is no normal, just your normal. Some people experience a lot of pain, some very little, some see the doctor twice a week, some see him once a week. Some get told no dairy, some get told no egg. Some are allowed a little meat, some are recommended pure veg. One of the beauties of this treatment is that every person is treated as an individual. Everything is prescribed and you are treated as though you are unique. Funny that, because you are!
Why would we want to aspire to normal when we can embrace being unique? We need to break societies hold on being normal and embrace all our differences. It’s those differences that make the world interesting, that create innovation, that mean we can use airplanes to travel the world, sit quietly in a beautiful garden, or use technology to stay connected to family. Let us see if we can stop worrying about being normal, stop fearing things and others that aren’t normal, and look at the world through other’s eyes to understand their normal.
So go out there and be your normal, and be ok with it. And if others question you about not being normal, tell them its “your normal” and listen for the silence.
Jugood 