My entire life has been built around one goal; to be normal. Normal, to me, is an environment where I don't stand out, where I'm not different. Which, if you're me, isn't always easy. First off, I don't even have a good idea of what normal is. The idea of normal, in America at least, is that you're never satisfied with what you have and are always looking for the next big thing. Our cultural narrative is built around chasing after the richest, even when you're drowning in debt. I know it's common, but is it really normal? How many of us are living solely to buy as much stuff as we can? I may not know people who are chasing after designer handbags, but does that mean I'm weird, or does that mean that we don't know as much about normal as we think we do?
Secondly, normal requires that you fit into a box of some sort, that you're something. You can't be normal if you want to be a bunch of different things at once. It's never stated, but how many people pursue more than two or three interest. If what you want to learn about changes from day to day, what does that make you. The thing about normal is that it has to be simple, something that people can understand instantly so they aren't always trying to categorize you. I have a lot of interests, most of them fairly niche, I'm not a person who's easily categorized. Or maybe I am. Maybe everyone has a lot of interests, it's just that their biggest one is being a person who can fit into their group of friends easily, so they only focus on the things their friends say their interested in. So many people only see their friends at work, or at school, or at club meetings. They don't see their friends doing other things in their down time. Could it be that we all have a lot of interests, we just ignore most of them because our social groups wouldn't approve?
Thirdly, most people say that society is wonderful and has enabled people to do wonderful things. I don't agree with that anymore. With the pandemic, I've learned that there's a lot about society, in America at least, that I just don't like. I don't like that you have to be one thing, and only one thing, for most of your life, and if you change your mind later then you basically have to start over. I don't like that if you're a member of society, you have to think that it's flawless, or that any flaws it does have are easily fixable. If you want to be a member of society, you can't question its worth, nor can you ask if it's enabling greatness or trapping people in a system they'll never escape from. I don't like that, for these reasons, it's now broken and nobody can fix it.
Most of me knows that these flaws will be fixed eventually, I don't think we're far away from admitting that we just don't know how society works. Someone, I don't know who, is going to come up with a theory that will revolutionize how we think of society the same way Isaac Newton revolutionized physics. Heck, I expect multiple people will come up with the same idea at the same time and fight over who should get credit. All the pieces are there, all it'll take is someone with enough background to see where they all fit together. It wouldn't even surprise me if the person who figures this out has a background in physics, it seems to me like it's a problem based on how physics works.
Maybe I'm crazy, but this is how I see the world. But I have seen people say things that reflect what I think, so I don't think I'm that far off. All I know is that someday, I'm sure, I'll be seen as normal.
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