DUToE #3

Normal or weird.

So. Basically, are we normal or weird? To me what is "normal" is in fact a powerful subjective statement which is intended to say something about identity, ie, "what is not normal is myself for I am purposeful and special". Now, when I look at my habits and likes and dislikes, it's true that some of them could be taken to be a little weird, maybe eclectic especially given an appropriate perspective. But then that perspective will be taken as "normal" or "odd" as well. Normal is a word, much like "beauty" or "justice", that ultimately has no meaning that we can easily define in terms we could understand, but that we seem to get anyway. I can't use analogies to define it because what seems normal to me seems deviant to others. The word has too much baggage. But that's not the real trouble with normal.

The real trouble is getting away from normal if you don't want it. There is no escaping it. It's like a terrible infection of regression to the mean. What I eventually settled on is that I like what I like, and fuck ya'll. That means however that I have a "normal" set of routines or associations and likes that cobble together, even if they're sort of weird to the outsider. I suppose, in my view, what would be the best escape route from normal would be to do many different things as possible. Except that's kind of what my brain already does by trying to focus on many different things in a given week, so that too seems much too normal. That means that more or less normal is normally trying to avoid doing the things you see as normal from everyone else, except when you might like them normally, taking the whole thing back in its circular and meaningless direction.

And no. I did not just reverse normal and weird. A day and its expectations of common events and behaviors resulting in "normal" perceptions is "normal". Those common events and behaviors may not be "normal" in the sense that many people do them. But that's not the point here. "Abnormal" and "weird" is thrown about as though it suggests flaws. It does not. It suggests perceptions, behaviors, and events that are unexpected. That kind of variety is, or at least can be, interesting. To the "right" sort of mind.