...Still Alive

Ok, back in civilization…it’s noisy here. I’m going to transcribe the other entries tomorrow, I’m tired from the drive and I’m hungry. Here’s a little something for your eyeballs.

I don’t think that ‘normal’ actually exists as a thing anyone can be, or anyone has ever been. I think normal is basically what everyone sees, it’s the superficial stuff that we all put out for the public to see: you have a job and a house with a white picket fence and a couple kids and his and hers matching Priuses and a dog and a cat and a hobby shed, but it’s not who we are. Maybe there was a time when there was a ‘normal’ or Stepford-y or Leave it to Beaver-y (hah) something that some or most people were or did, but we haven’t been that in a long time and I think it’s interesting to think about.

For instance, it’s totally not normal to get in a fight in public…HOWEVER I think it’s totally normal/usual/common to want to fight the kid who made our coffee wrong or to want to punch the guy who ordered a double-half-cab-caramel macchiato-upside-down with two squirts of vanilla and no whip and extra caramel (or whatever, I have no idea if that’s a thing). But we don’t do it, that’s the normal response to the normal animal urge. I think it’s probably fair to say that most people have thought about stealing something too, but you didn’t do it. I’m sure the opportunity has probably presented itself and everything, but most people are decent human beings and don’t take advantage of the situation. We can all steal and fight and lie and manipulate others, but most of the time, we don’t. The ‘norm’ is to totally think about doing the crazy stuff and then deny the urges and stay within the framework that has been laid down in front of us.

I think I got started on this whole thing because I was over-thinking something from my last post where I talked about a checklist before leaving town and I was like, ‘this can’t be normal. Other people’s brains probably don’t work like this.’ And from there I came to, ‘what is normal?’ I’m practicing a behavior based on events that have impacted me in my life, that’s not out of the realm of normalcy. Just because my mind works out problems/issues/puzzles differently than other people doesn’t make it weird or not normal, it makes the process unique to me. I’m sure that there are people that are more neurotic than I am and there’s people that are much less neurotic. Neither of us are right or wrong, and neither option is more normal than the next.

Everyone has their own process and their own barometer for ‘normal’ and it’s based on their experiences. And our language is so limiting that we all use the same word and yet we’re describing things that in most cases are just not the same thing. I dunno, I guess I just think it’s an interesting concept and it’s one we all just take for granted in our day to day interactions.