Dear Editor,
This has been getting on my nerves for the last 8 months or so, being surrounded by people who try to convince themselves (and me) that their being different is a handicap compared to people they deem “normal”. Now please explain here what ‘normal’ is. What is the norm for normality, do tell me what the insane notion that entails such a thing as “normal” must consist.
Curiously looking into the dictionary, (Merriam-Webster, btw my fave) one of the definitions of “normal”(if you can state or describe exactly the nature of this word, so fleeting in its obscure essence as such) mentions a “normal individual” as a person of an average development and intelligence. Wow, hold it there! I for one certainly do not strive for that particularly dismal objective! To be of an average in any which way or for that bland goal simply to obtain the nirvana of “normal”….. You have got to be kidding me!
OK, my “normals” are actually facts, for instance the fact that the original kilogram is kept under guard in Sèvre, France, as a norm of a standard kilogram. Even so, to my disappointment, there is no more such thing since the original artefact has dwindled in its environmental demise to minus 50 milligrams less the original kilogram. Sadly, even facts cannot be measured to normalcy. Bad example, maybe not.
So here we go with the self-pitying mantra, “I always felt different”, well duh, maybe because there is no one like you ever and will never be. No wonder you are different! Even identical twins are different. So does that mentioning of their feeling “different”, enables the free fall for all actions on their behalf not perceived “normal”? By whom? The so-called averagely boring “normal” persons? I wonder.
Embrace your uniqueness and comparing is an obsolete void into nothingness. Normal is different since there is no such normal to everyone else’s different.
M.I.A. Roos
