Swings and Roundabouts

I’m well aware that I’m not posting about very cheery things at the moment. I guess I’m just accentuating the negative because that’s what sticks in my mind long enough for me to write about it.

There was the creepy man rubbing himself on the bus. Groups of people that walk straight into me like I don’t exist. Jellyfish, talking into voids, pity, narrowly missing being splatted getting off the tram, being in a city I haven’t quite clicked with. Realising everything I can’t change. And nice as it may sound, living in a hotel starts to become not so fun after a while.

There are things that balance all of that out. The joyful op shop on Chapel Street. The guy on reception at my hotel who gave me 11 free days of internet instead of my usual hour. The surprise postcard from my best friend. The feeling of real responsibility at work. Realising I can make an impact. Pushing the boundaries of what I can do. Getting to know a couple of people that listen. The full moon, being able to spend days playing with Final Cut, finding a big pack of multi-coloured plasticine for $5, nice weather, cycling, warm evenings, the sea. I’m falling into postcard speak. But you get my point: it’s not all bad.

What is Normal?

kiwi 7.jpg, originally uploaded by crumplestiltskin.

We’re all a little bit deformed. This mutated kiwi fruit sat shrivelling away in my fruit bowl for days, and I’m sure not a minute went past when he didn’t count his blessings that he didn’t look like his strange, unmutated companions. You see, our idea of normality doesn’t necessarily have to be imposed on us by society and other people – without ‘us’, the individual, there would be nobody to have that idea of normality, and so it couldn’t exist.

However much we want to blame others for our low self esteem or for creating unrealistic expectations, it’s simply a symptom of spending too long gazing outwards and not appreciating the view inwards. It may be deformed, it may be demented, but it’s the only real normality that we can experience, and as the only thing we can be sure of, it provides us with the only way we can comprehend the world.

What’s the point of buying into socially accepted standards of normality that exclude and discriminate so readily? Unless we’re satisfied with society’s hotch-potch mass of conflicting ideologies and rules in which we find no acceptance, we have to create our own values. If nothing existed but Mr. Kiwi, what would it matter that he was deformed? With nobody to judge him and nobody to compare himself to, deformity would equate to perfection. He could be purple, elephant-shaped or taste like sour milk, but he would still be him; there would be no other way to be.

Our concept of normality and our values in general have been homogenised by a society of belonging and exclusion. It’s time to scrape them back and reintroduce ourselves to ourselves.