You're Odd. I'm Weak. We're Doomed.
The last place I'd have thought to look for words of wisdom is the mouth of Kevin Federline. But Mr. ex-Britney Spears surprised me with his observation on the tabloid frenzy surrounding the custody battle over his children: "I think that the infatuation with the whole thing is that watching us go through things makes other people feel normal."
I've done my share of sniggering at the eccentricities of celebrities. I used to wonder whether their behaviour was rooted in some insecurity that comes from fame. Now I'm embarrassed and wondering what my smugness reveals about my own insecurities.
I'm pretty sure I don't have a strong need to feel normal. I think normality is a just a powerful fiction. And yes, I am convinced it is a fiction. If you believe that everyone is unique, then you can't possibly believe that "normal" is anything but an abstraction.
I think "he's normal" is really a euphemism for "I don't feel threatened by him". It's only the people who make us feel uncomfortable that we label as "not normal". Maybe their personalities differ from ours. Or their beliefs. Or their abilities are so different from ours that they make us feel vulnerable. (When I was in school I was sometimes taken to visit a home for spastic children. It used to terrify me to consider that I myself might one day experience some form of disability.)
Maybe that's it: by declaring ourselves as normal we can fool ourselves into feeling invulnerable. It's way to say to ourselves "that will never be me".
What scant security if it comes from such self-deception! It would be so much more honest to admit that "there, but for the grace of God, go I".
7 comments:
I would have never thought you'd know who Kevin Federline was, leave alone quoting him!
The notion of "being/acting normal" isn't so much about insecurities, but rather being one among the crowd, of not sticking out, of following convention. If I think someone's not normal, it's probably because I do not understand that person or can not predict any patterns of behavior or he/she does things which aren't really expected by me.
We do get uncomfortable by those dots that move out of the trend line-that's normal :)
Good post.That's normal too.
You're right. There's a very thin line between "I don't get you" and "I don't want to get you because if I tried I might scare myself".
i refer to everything that follows a set pattern as normal. whenever i've not tried to understand people, it's more coz i'm self-centered and they don't affect my immediate world... nice post...
Have you noticed that when you tell say Y, that X is a normal person, they seem to understand and even feel that they completely know X, even if X & Y haven't even heard of each other ever?
Nice article. Made me question a few things about myself :)
very thought provoking...makes me want to look at my motives again...luv the honesty
Its funny how you get some profound statements from least expected sources/situations.
I was watching the second season of the tv-series Heroes and the newfound boy-friend of the regenerating freak mentions "One can either be an alien or a robot"; I would go one step beyond and say that one is a robot at times and alien at others. The folks who figure out what to be in what circumstances are considered normal while others are eccentric.
That doesnt make normal any better than eccentric, though.
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