What is normal?
That which you understand. That which fits comfortable in the box you’ve created. That which is quiet. That which conducts itself according to the rules of its given society. That which challenges nothing and no one. That which causes no waves. That which makes no news. That which sits pretty. That which witnesses great abuse on the weaker ones and does nothing. Says nothing. That which fears rejection of its peers. That which fears being “weird”.
Normal is the human who fears being human. Normal is the great one who fears being great. Normal is the broken one who cannot admit it. Normal is the gay person who doesn’t come out. Normal is the CEO who’s company abuses millions. Normal is the western girl who buys the clothes from the company that abuses millions. Normal is the one who can’t’ take it anymore and breaks free. Normal is the one who takes it all her life and never even peeps. Normal is the one who shoots heroin to get out of pain. Normal is the one who does yoga instead.
I am normal, and so are you.
Welcome to my world. It’s called Earth.
gabrielasblog.com 
Normal is that small, indistinct sound that you hear when you awake. It is so quiet you can spend your whole life trying to hear it more clearly – & many never do. The true terror of the normal is only revealed in a moment of epiphany; when you realize that what you are hearing is the wordless scream of despair & horror that lasts from the day of your birth until you die. Normal has no comfort except in oblivion.
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I’m going to chew on this one for a while, Rhino. Are you saying that suffering is inevitable and there is no escape no matter what?
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Hmmmm. I think that pain & suffering are not the same thing. Pain is something you have all your life, mental, emotional & physical. TE Lawrence is alleged to have said, “Of course it hurts, the trick is in not minding that it hurts.” Suffering we gift to ourselves (& we al do, without exception).
What I was trying to say (clumsily) was that the ubiquitous normal you describe so well in your post, comes at a price that is paid by the good, the bad & the mad; & in every case the price is the same. Ergo, maybe the common thread of “normal” is the pain.
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Hmmmm… Do we really know? Will we ever really know? Does it matter? Maybe our common thread is this human condition called pain, or despair. Maybe it’s something that we can’t yet describe…
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Hello Rhino, I’m replying again to your reply because I have had some time to think about this. My first experience of winter in Ithaca was very lovely because I didn’t mind the bite of cold. I practiced observing it and thinking to myself, this is neither bad nor good, it’s just how it is. It’s just a sensation on your skin. I found that as soon as I did that all my negative emotion attached with cold dissipated and I could walk to work every day in the snow and see how beautiful it all was. Then, while at work, everyone was depressed because it was so cold! I wanted to tell them what I was experiencing with “non judgment”, but I refrained. So pain, when seeing it as it is, without attaching a story to it, becomes less painful and the *suffering* part doesn’t have to exist. So then, what causes suffering? is it the stories that we create in our head that we attach to the painful experience?
Have a lovely weekend and I’ll be expecting to see some more of your crazy posts on Monday!
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You have it exactly. Pain is NOT suffering. Pain is part of being alive, the suffering is how we make the sensations of pain (of whatever sort) an overwhelming & negative experience. Walking in the cold only becomes suffering if you convince yourself that it has no redeeming value; & as you found, once you see it has a positive side (the beauty, the sharpness, the clarity) then it is just the pain of the cold. It’s not the suffering that defines us, because we do it to ourselves (& looking in a mirror teaches you little), pain is universal & is sometimes a price worth paying for the the things that it can show us about the world & about ourselves. It’s a shame it isn’t easier to accomplish.
“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”
– Julius Caesar
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Nice quote! Thank you Rhino! 🙂
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I like the response too…I it pretty complete, and ended with a perfect quote. You’re are the best!
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Everyone is normal and special and growing just as we are. Every story adds to the story. Though put this way, now I feel it deeper, like another phaset of self acceptance kicked in. Can’t get enough of those. This is a sweet dose.
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It’s all about self acceptance. Every society has its “normal” person. Every society has its hero. They are usually not the same person. The difference is that the hero embraces more societies and the normal only its small circle…
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Oh, that sais something. Nice concrete picture. So, we all become heroes. Acceptance is heroric. Well it is hard enought! So yeah.
Not all acceptances are hard for everyone. But I realize I have my own unexpected acceptance challange where meeting Racheal’s Challange taxes my normal self into bulllieing, meanness, exclusion and it takes the hero, who does not appear when summoned by the way, to even behave “normal” in this situation. So, sometimes normal is hiroric. And I have a nemisis so I supose everyone must, and it sucks for anyone whose nemisis is a whole freaken race religion or society. Cuz this is hard the hero isn’t just hanging around to be summoned, the bastard. I think maybe I’ll just punch him out instead.
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HI Wayward, so I had to go read about Rachel’s Challenge to know what you are talking about. I’m out of the loop! He’s a quote I got from the official website (http://www.rachelschallenge.org/):
“I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little kindness can go.”
The bastard hero isn’t just waiting around twittling her thumbs, and when you need her the most she is nowhere present. I know you enough to know how big your nemesis is, and I have come to this conclusion ~ that it is never going away. The “bad guys” will exist as long as there are people willing to play “hero” and fight them. We create the bad guy out of our inner need to be the hero. The real hero is the person who is just kind, plain and simple. I like Rachel, and the challenge she left behind.
I, personally, have come around this circle many times ~ Needing to be the hero, fighting as hard as I can in defense of the abused ones, then realizing I’m way off track. What I need to be doing is creating something new, creating options, and a new beautiful world. Then I realize that the hero is not the person who fights the bad guys. The hero is the person who is true to themselves and shows, by modelling the way, how others can do the same.
The abused woman of a Third World country frees herself and others follow in her wake long after she is gone and living a different life. She has no idea that this happened, she is just living free and true to herself. She is the hero and she doesn’t know it.
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The thing I hate about you 2 is that you are right too often. In Salem you would have burned!
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hmmm…confused..You speaking to me or my sister? Why would we both have burned in Salem? Where is that place? I thought it meant “hi”…
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Sorry, it was really a comment about you both; and Salem was the US home to witch-burning as a spectator sport.
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Witches were burned in the US?? I don’t even want to think about how fucking ignorant and evil humanity has been…
there is hope…
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To be honest all but 1 were hanged, the last was “pressed” to death. Sorry for the sloppy use of words.
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