Normal

Normal is a strange concept. There is nothing concrete about it. It is decided by society, by education. It’s a fabrication of the human mind. But that doesn’t make it any less powerful.

There have always been people outside of the norm and for most of them, it was a struggle. It is hard to go against the current, to have a different point of view from the majority. Especially when your opinions, if accepted, would change what everyone grew to consider the standard.

For a big part of my life, I’ve acted as the people around me. I’ve gone with the majority, even though they were not always right. I had to lose myself before I could find myself.

Before I could find my own voice, I can’t point to a moment in time when it happened, but I noticed a change in me for the first time after my father’s death. From then on the changes kept coming. I started to see the world in new colors and this made me different. It made me better fitted to understand myself and the world around me, to understand why people are how they are and do what they do.

I refuse to see any part of the world as normal, just because it would mean another part is abnormal. The world is as it is, with good and bad, with happy and sad, with struggle and achievement.  In this world of all possibilities, nothing is fixed, there are only different choices.

I have learned to see all for what it is not for what everyone around tells me I should see. I have to thank my parents for this because they always encouraged me to think on my own, to make my own opinions, to be my own man.