Please Don’t Call Me Normal

I don’t remember exactly how old I was the first time someone called me normal. I don’t remember who said it, what we were doing, or what prompted the observation. But I remember how I felt.

Offended.

Which, when you think about it, is a pretty ridiculous reaction to a word most people consider perfectly harmless. Someone was probably trying to reassure me or simply commenting on something I had done. Meanwhile, there I was, a small child having what amounted to a personal crisis over the suggestion that I might be normal.

Normal? Excuse me? What exactly have I done to deserve that accusation?

I can’t tell you why the word bothered me so much, but I remember it feeling heavy, almost like a burden. It carried an expectation I didn’t want. Being normal sounded like being handed a box with instructions to climb inside, make myself comfortable, and stay there because that’s where everybody else was.

Well, that didn’t sound particularly appealing.

Now, before anyone decides I was a child with an inflated sense of my own importance, let me clarify something. I didn’t think I was special. I wasn’t wandering around convinced I had some extraordinary destiny or that the world needed to recognize my magnificent uniqueness. I simply didn’t want to be like everybody else, and apparently I had some fairly strong opinions about that from an early age.

I think I’ve always had an independent spirit. It’s not something I remember developing or consciously deciding to embrace. It was simply there, as much a part of me as anything else. I didn’t particularly like being told how I was supposed to think, act, or approach something just because that’s how it had always been done. I wanted to know what else was possible, and I suspect I was an absolute delight whenever an adult tried explaining that we did something a certain way because that’s the way it was done.

As I got older, that instinct began showing up in how I approached problems and creative projects. If something wasn’t working, I wanted to find another way. If a process seemed unnecessarily complicated, I wondered whether it could be simpler. And if somebody told me there was only one way to accomplish something, well, that was practically an invitation to start looking for another.

Not because I needed to prove I was different. That’s never really been the point. I wasn’t interested in doing something the opposite way simply for the satisfaction of being contrary, although I’m sure there have been moments when someone might disagree with that assessment.

I wanted to find the best way to accomplish whatever I was trying to do. Sometimes that meant being more creative or finding a more efficient solution. And sometimes, after exploring all the alternatives, it meant discovering that the original approach was perfectly sensible. Imagine that. The conventional method occasionally wins.

What mattered to me was knowing I’d considered the possibilities rather than accepting something simply because nobody had questioned it.

For a long time, I assumed everybody approached the world that way.

It’s funny how our own perspective can fool us. We spend our entire lives inside our own heads, experiencing our thoughts and reactions as naturally as breathing, and somewhere along the way we start assuming everybody else’s mind works more or less the same way.

I didn’t necessarily think everybody should be like me. It simply hadn’t occurred to me that the desire to question established methods, explore alternatives, and step outside expectations wasn’t something everybody experienced.

That realization came fairly early in my adult life, and it was enlightening. Some people genuinely enjoyed familiar routines. Others preferred established approaches because they were reliable and comfortable. Plenty of people weren’t interested in questioning every expectation or searching for another way to do something, and they weren’t secretly miserable because of it. They were perfectly happy.

And here I was, someone who had spent her childhood objecting to the idea that other people might define what was normal for me, discovering that I’d been assuming my own way of thinking was normal for everybody else.

Well, isn’t that interesting?

It changed the way I approached people. I began recognizing that understanding someone else’s perspective required more than simply acknowledging that they had one. I needed to listen to what they were actually saying, not just wait for my opportunity to explain how I would approach the same situation.

That’s something I’ve become better at over the years. I still have my independent streak, and I suspect I always will, but I’ve learned that other people can see the same situation very differently without either of us necessarily being wrong.

And perhaps that’s where my relationship with normal began to change. Not because I suddenly wanted to be normal. Sweet merciful disco pigeon, let’s not start spreading rumors.

But I started recognizing how often we use that word to describe whatever happens to be familiar to us.

What feels normal in one family might seem completely unusual in another. Something considered perfectly ordinary in one community might raise eyebrows somewhere else. Even within the same generation, people can have wildly different ideas about how life is supposed to look.

Those expectations have a way of becoming invisible. We grow accustomed to them, stop questioning them, and sometimes begin treating them as rules that everybody else should follow. That’s the part that still bothers me.

I don’t particularly care whether someone enjoys a conventional life. If familiar routines, established traditions, and predictable Saturday afternoons make you happy, wonderful. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. What troubles me is the idea that we should all be expected to want the same things.

Because what happens to the person who wants to learn to play the hurdy-gurdy?

And yes, I mean the actual instrument. If you’ve never seen one, imagine somebody looked at a violin, a keyboard, and a hand-cranked mechanical contraption and decided they should all become roommates. It’s a fascinating instrument, and I would be delighted to meet someone who decided that learning to play one was exactly how they wanted to spend their free time.

Maybe your thing isn’t medieval musical instruments. Maybe you want to write stories, perform in community theater, paint pictures, or take a basket-weaving class. Perhaps you’ve been fascinated by frogs since childhood and want to spend your weekends learning everything you can about them.

There are people whose entire careers involve studying frogs. We call them scientists and recognize the value of their work. But tell someone you’ve decided to spend your Saturday learning an obscure instrument, and suddenly they want to know what you’re planning to do with that skill.

What if you’re planning to enjoy yourself?

I think we’ve become a little too accustomed to measuring the value of our interests by whether they’re productive, practical, or likely to impress someone. Not everything we enjoy needs to become a career, a side business, or a finished product worthy of display. Sometimes curiosity is reason enough.

Of course, we don’t all have unlimited time and resources to pursue every passing fascination. Adulthood has a remarkable talent for interrupting our more entertaining plans. Bills arrive, families need care, jobs require our attention, and sometimes the work we do to support ourselves isn’t particularly exciting.

I’ve never believed that being independent means ignoring those responsibilities. We still have obligations to ourselves and the people who depend on us, and basic human decency isn’t something we get to abandon in the name of individuality. But I also don’t believe those responsibilities have to consume every part of who we are.

Maybe you work eight hours a day doing something you wouldn’t choose if money were no object. Maybe you work two jobs because that’s what your circumstances require. Finding time for yourself can be difficult, and for some people it’s considerably harder than it is for others. Still, I hope there’s room somewhere for something that belongs to you, even if nobody else understands why you enjoy it.

Sometimes that doesn’t require a class, expensive equipment, or a grand plan. It might be an afternoon spent exploring somewhere new, an unexpected conversation, or deciding to take a different road simply because you’ve always wondered where it goes.

I’m a fan of a spontaneous road trip, although I do recommend checking the gas gauge before embracing your adventurous spirit. There are limits to how much character development I need from a Saturday afternoon.

That willingness to follow my curiosity has kept life interesting. I’ve pursued ideas that didn’t work, taken chances that turned out differently than I expected, and occasionally discovered that my clever solution wasn’t nearly as clever once I tried it.

I’ve made mistakes, learned from them, and done my best to move forward without carrying a collection of regrets into every new possibility. I don’t see those experiences as reasons to stop trying. They’re part of how I’ve learned to navigate a world that rarely unfolds exactly as expected.

Along the way, I’ve visited places I once knew only from pictures or stories, found myself involved in experiences that began with little more than deciding to give something a try, and met an extraordinary variety of people.

Some experiences were wonderful. Others were challenging. A few probably deserved a more thorough examination of the potential consequences before I enthusiastically jumped in. But they all became part of the life I’ve lived, and I wouldn’t want to exchange that for a version of myself who always chose the expected path.

The people I’ve encountered have been just as interesting as the experiences themselves. Some have pursued unusual passions with remarkable dedication. Others have built lives around routines and traditions that bring them genuine happiness. I’ve met people whose talents, interests, and ways of looking at the world were completely different from mine, and I’ve learned something from all of them.

Which brings me back to that little girl who was so thoroughly offended by being called normal.

I wish I could tell you I’ve outgrown that particular reaction, but apparently some things are deeply embedded in the operating system. Call me normal today, and there’s still a part of me that immediately objects. I may not say anything, but somewhere inside, that child is standing with her arms crossed, wondering what on earth you’ve been paying attention to.

The difference is that I don’t take it nearly as personally anymore. I’ve become comfortable enough with who I am that somebody else’s description doesn’t carry the weight it once did. And somewhere along the way, I’ve become a lot more interested in discovering what makes other people who they are than worrying about whether any of us fit somebody else’s definition of normal.

I still love an unexpected idea, an unusual hobby, and a person who can spend twenty minutes enthusiastically explaining something I knew absolutely nothing about when the conversation started. Especially if that something involves a medieval musical instrument or an unusually fascinating frog.

And I rather like that the world is full of people who approach life differently than I do. Imagine how terribly boring it would be if we all thought alike, wanted the same things, and agreed on everything. We’d run out of interesting conversations before lunch.

So no, after all these years, I still have no particular interest in being normal. But I’m perfectly happy for you to be whatever normal means to you.

Although if everybody decided they didn’t want to be normal, I suppose being unusual would become the new normal.

Wonderful. Now I have to find another box to refuse to climb into.

✨Remember, Be Kind. Do More Good. We Got This.

💫Until next time, lovelies, keep jibber jabbering about the stories and ideas that move you.