I have trouble acting normal when I’m nervous. (Quick, name the song.) Actually, I have trouble acting normal at any given moment that I’m breathing on this Earth. Because who the hell designated “normal” anyhow? It’s some weird term given to what we imagine most of the other people are doing. But we don’t know. We don’t ever fucking KNOW. Like William Zinsser wrote: “Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.”
And, if we knew (for sure), would we really care? Do you want to do something just because a lot of other people do it? Doesn’t that seem incredibly stupid? Like would I CrossFit solely because other people are CrossFitting? I don’t think so. But it’s what I need. Maybe it’s what you need too. See, I figure YOU do what you need to in order to keep breathing in this world, and I’m going to do what I need to do to keep breathing. Notice I didn’t say “to keep sane” … probably because I’m not really sure most days what “sane” is. Again, it seems like some artificial construct. Like someone else got to decide these terms and these meanings, without knowing me or my heart or my brain or my life. And so why should I care?
I guess what I’m saying is that you can either let this world define you, or you can define yourself. Here’s hoping you got the chutzpah to be who you really are.
