Normality isn’t normal
Even though we all love to believe that we are intrinsically different and unique, we all share something incredibly similar but devastating— we all want to be “normal.” Humans love to be praised, adored, and admired; However, a deep, almost secret desire, we all posses is to fit in. Throughout the course of our lives we chase ideals and act accordingly to a set of standards we wish to blend into; to be looked upon as normal. But what if all these perceptions of normality are not just damaging, but also abnormal?
How does an act, a thought, ones appearance, etc. become classified as normal? What are the guidelines in order to categorize and label something as such? Do these criteria exist or do we create them due to the immense terror of instability? Our lives are filled with fears, but the one thing that scares us the most is the inability to alter a situation (possessing no control)— the dreadful, almost hopeless, position of immobility that either makes us or breaks us. The inability to accept what could not be changed is what led us to creating the concept of normality.
When did it happen that as soon as something in our lives changes we get scared and label it as “different” which becomes synonymous with “bad?” Habitually, it is comfortable and immensely convenient to maintain an everlasting lifestyle of familiarity and idleness, but why is it that many of us have this instilled fear of change? It is as if someone took a drill and permanently screwed into our minds that any alteration and irregularity in our daily routines automatically becomes equivalent to “unacceptable” and “dangerous.” Normality is a figment of our own imagination that we believe keeps us sane but in reality drives us insane.
Some of us are born different. We are automatically revoked of the option — luxury dare I say — of being perceived as normal. I, for example, was born with one eyebrow black and the other white and to top it all off, a streak of snow white hair smack down in the middle of my head. Those features speak for me before I even have a chance to say my first words; they make my first impressions without ever giving me the ability to do so for myself. For the majority of my life, my biggest dream was to be like the rest — be normal. I dyed my hair and my singular blonde eyebrow to try to fit in because in my mind it meant that all my problems would vanish and my life would be shifted/altered to perfection — isn't that what we believe normality grants us?
News flash, it doesn’t. As we continuously chase normality and grab it by it’s tail, it always slips away. It took embarrassingly too many years to realize that even normality itself isn’t normal. What once would be considered unacceptable later becomes highly desirable and praised. My once frowned upon, nature given, “stylistic choices” are now perceived as edgy, rebellious, and special, which among the current generation is actively becoming the new norm. Normality is the most unstable aspect of our lives, but we are blind to see so under the dominating notion that continuously abiding to it equivocates with happiness — and isn't happiness the most important thing to life?
Learning to release the never-ending chase towards normality will open our lives to the happiness that we so passionately desire. We should learn to accept that no matter what phase our current lives are at or what mental/emotional wave we are currently surfing, it is all normal. Life shouldn’t be divided between what is right and wrong, black and white, normal and abnormal, because who are we to decide? The one thing we will forever posses full and total control over is nothing. There is no merit or payout in fearing the unalterable. Don’t strive to be normal — strive to be real. At the end of the day, reality is our biggest fear but our most rewarding companion. Learn to embrace it— make abnormality your best friend.
