Normal to What?

People like to think that they're weird. They like to say that being weird is good. They encourage "just being yourself."
I posit that this is bullshit. [ref: http://xkcd.com/122/]
People are actually normal, and they want you to be normal. When "just being yourself" causes you to behave like a normal person, this is good. I'm not sure if this advice is also for people who are not normal. How much should you need to change yourself for the sake of others? What about just one person? How much should you be expected to fake what you cannot change? At what point are you no longer "being yourself." What if people don't like you? Should you wait until you find people that do? Or do you put more effort into appearing like a well-adjusted member of society? How much effort can you put into maintaining a normal appearance until the friends you make don't even know who you are?

During childhood, it is exceedingly obvious that fitting in is of utmost importance. Later in life we learn that it's also important to differentiate yourself. Just don't be too different. 


There's this idea that we grow up with that out there, somewhere, there is the elusive one. The one for us. A soulmate. It seems to me that the weirder you are, the smaller your pool of potential soulmates shrinks. Of course, you only need the one. But what if there comes a point when no one's left in your pool? What if you are simply too weird to find love? Are you somehow betraying yourself if you decide to become less weird?

What Do You Expect?

I sometimes get frustrated by the disparity between who I am and what is expected of me. Sometimes I feel that I cannot live up to expectations, leaving me a failure. Sometimes I tell Plato to go perform actions unsuitable for polite company, because the main difference between Me and Ideal Me is that I exist and anyone who wants anyone else will just have to deal. And then I remind myself that that isn't quite fair, what's so great about existing that makes Me more important than Ideal Me? And what makes you so sure that Me exists? How do you know that Me isn't just some distorted reflection of all the Ideal Mes manifested in this world of Forms?

There some interesting ideas that crop up in our culture (and possibly others, I don't know). I think that our culture as Americans is very self-centered. So much of our culture emphasizes being yourself. Finding yourself. Being true to yourself. I think of these ideas as very much for white people. It's not always about you or what you want. Sometimes it's about what you must do because that is what is expected of you. 

The idea of a Me is somewhat misleading, maybe even completely wrong. I think of it like an electron. You cannot "find" Me. You cannot pin down Me like a butterfly. Me is not a classical object. Me does not have a position or momentum except as a probability field. You cannot observe Me without changing Me. How can you be true to such a finicky thing? Can Me be discovered or must Me be invented? Does Me even exist? Or is there only the person living your life?

I sometimes feel expectations bearing down on me with the weight on inevitable disappointment. Like it's only a matter of time before I'm revealed as a fraud who never had it in them to live up to those expectations, or even worse, who could have lived up to them but simply didn't. 

To relieve the weight, I tell myself that I owe nothing to anyone. That all I really need to do is survive. I do not need greatness. I do not need happiness. I do not need money. I do not need friends. All I need to do is be alive. All I need to do is be sustainable. All I need to do is be alive until I'm dead. 

And then I become afraid that I can't even do that. I didn't say that my fears were rational. This leads me to a new life goal: Do not become a crack whore. I actually think that I can accomplish goal fairly easily as long as I never do crack. As long as I never do crack, no matter how bad life gets, at least I won't be a crack whore. And that's comforting, I don't really know why. Maybe it's just nice to have a lower bound on my life.

Maybe that is what I will tell My Future Kids: as long as you never sell your body in exchange for crack or leave your life to "find" yourself, I will not be disappointed.