Do they call you strange?

"Why do you call me strange?, he asked. "Well, you dress funny for one thing and you talk about strange things", she answered.

"For you, strange is bad?, he asked.

Being called "strange" is something I have had to deal with most of my life, but what does it mean exactly?

According to a few different definitions on the Net: unusual or surprising; difficult to understand or explain, differing from the normal, out of the ordinary.

So, what is the definition of "normal" then? >"Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected".

 From the Latin normālis;  made according to a carpenter's square, rule, pattern".

So the term began as carpenter's tool to now be a commonly used "tool" for society to evaluate,

well, ...... a whole lot of things. 

Of course what's considered normal in one society may not be viewed as normal in another and so on....perhaps when say normal we mean: "expected" behaviour, response, outcome.

It's often considered normal to cry, to be sombre at a funeral, rather than falling over with laughter. Unless......(insert here reasons for why x was laughing)

It is often considered normal to laugh when watching something funny, rather than curling up in a foetal position crying.

Unless......(insert here why x was crying)

If there are no two humans with identical fingerprints, could it not be plausible to speculate that "normal" perhaps is a catch phrase for the most common/expected response/behaviour, rather than a template for how everyone have to/ought to, respond/behave?

In my family, keeping in touch regularly is an expression of love and concern, for others it may be viewed as an intrusion, as controlling behaviour. For some of us dressing in black clothes may be a fashion statement, for others it may be viewed as pretentious. For some of us going to bed at 10:00 pm during a work week is normal, for others it may be the time of day when we work the best. For some of us pop, rock, metal, jazz and so on music, may be viewed as noise rather than music, yet for others it may be the music that inspires.

When my son became a Goth in his last years of high school, I realised that I needed to expand my understanding of many things. So I began by asking questions, not in order to correct but in order to understand. "What is it about Panthera that you like? What is it about wearing all black clothes that you like? What is it about black nail polish you like?" and so forth. Fortunately for me, my son was willing to answer my many questions and so what at first seemed very strange to me, became "an expression of the search for ones individuality/identity", a very "normal" behaviour for a teenager.

Have you heard of the Bell Curve? I have a feeling it has a lot to do with how we experience what is normal or not.

"A normal distribution (or "a bell curve") is a statistical grouping of scores wherein the majority of people have scores in the middle and there is a smooth curve toward fewer scores at the extreme ends. It is often called a "bell curve" because the shape of the graph resembles a bell."

(If we view "normal" as in: living free of excessive discomfort/problems,  and "strange/abnormal" as in feeling or acting significantly distressed; then destroying a village in wartime and not experiencing anything afterward would be normal, and experiencing something for a long time thereafter; abnormal/strange.)

Personally, I rather toss the Bell curve, I think its more of a zig-zag curve....we are all different, and sometimes we say and do things that surprises even ourselves..

9-5 may be our normal until we get a shift job, a glass of wine/beer after work may be our normal until we are told we have liver problems, "easy-street" may be our normal until we find out our child has autism, keeping our cards close to the chest may be our normal until our spouse asks for a divorce, and so on.

Trying to live our lives according to a fictionalised notion of what normalcy is, may turn us into emotional "pretzels", leaving us feeling stumped when life throws us a "curve" ball.

"Instead of using the term strange, could not "different" be used?, he asked. Are we not all unique human beings but with some things and aspects in common? If someone insults you and you feel hurt, you may chose to respond with insulting back; would you view that as a normal response? If someone else chooses to respond to an insult with a kind word would you then view that as an abnormal, a strange response? Is not what we call normal, normal according to what we ourselves deem normal rather than a fixed position?"

"See, that's what I mean, you're strange, ofcourse normal is a fixed position," she responded.

"Would a normal person spend hours on end for years painting, or writing, or inventing, or experimenting, or calculating, or observing, or exploring, or thinking, although being told by others "you are a fool"? asked the man.

"No, a normal person would listen to what others say", the woman answered.

"Well, if Van Gogh, Shakespeare, Da Vinci, The Wright Brothers, Louis Pasteur, Einstein, Galileo, Marco Polo, Freud, had not ignored what others told them, where would we be today? Because we are all different we all have something different to contribute to our societies. A "new" thought that suddenly occur to us may seem strange at first, but once processed and digested; it often transforms into "normal", he continued.

"Different sounds too uncertain to me, "normal" sounds much more certain and stable," she quietly responded.

"Uncertainty is one of the main aspects of the human condition, it is a constant but if we can find a way to embrace it rather than resist it then we may be able to become more tolerant, accepting, and more compassionate toward people, ideas, and cultures that differ from ours", said the man.

“There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habituation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways.”   (Richard Dawkins)

If people call you "strange" then ask them to define "normal", if they can't, then perhaps they are strange....:)