Nearly Normal

Define Normal

 "Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live there."

Ellen Goodman

    Psychotherapist Alfred Adler once said, "The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well." Every now and then this deep human understanding penetrates my psyche and I realize that normal is a theoretical construct imagined by a designated group of people at a moment in time. When you read Ellen Goodman's quote above, and you put it together with how many times in the past few years we heard the lament, "we just need to get back to normal," you realize that there is no solid ground beneath our feet. Normal is whatever we conceive it to be and it changes by the day, by the decade and by the generation. 

    Make a quick inventory of your friends--and then identify the three you would hang the label "normal" on. Some friends of mine have an uncle they call "nearly normal Ned." It always makes me laugh, but when we think about it, don't we all fit that designation. Here in America, our capitalistic society makes what is called "normal" out of reach for most of us. In  my neighborhood, I see people driving trucks that cost $80,000--more than I paid for the first two houses I owned. Those trucks are often loaded with lawn mowers and leaf blowers, and anyone can see, one bad month would send them back to the dealership for nonpayment. That's what we call normal in the American dream--living far beyond our means and deep in debt.  

    According to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, we respond to life according to our stage of development, beginning with the basic needs for food, clothing and shelter, then progressing to the need for safety, and from there to loving and belonging, self esteem, and eventually to self-actualization. Presumably we are all climbing this hierarchy and progressing through the levels as we gain years of life. The interesting thing is that self-actualized people do not have all the trappings of success that we think of as necessary to happiness. They tend to be comfortable in their own skin without all the paraphernalia of capitalism. They are happy to lead simple lives, within their means, and feel neither deprived nor superior.  

    Most of us, I think, have our quirky habits and strange traits. Some of us have made it through the stages of insecurity and low self-esteem, and have come to an understanding that "things" do not make us feel normal. Only knowing ourselves well, and learning to love the quirks and weirdness, recognize the needs and drives, and clearly understand who we are in all our "nearly-normal-ness" will give us the contentment we seek. Everyone, after all, is normal until you get to know them. 

                                            In the Spirit,

                                             Jane