Monday, March 21, 2011

What is "normal?"

My 9th grade English teacher had a sign on the wall that said "normal is a myth." He always encouraged us to look beyond society norms to do whatever it was we wanted in our lives. He was an interesting character. He also had a "Kill the TV" sign.

My dictionary defines normal as "conforming with or constituting a norm or standard or level or type of social norm." Have you ever looked at a definition and thought it needed to be defined too? So, I started looking for other definitions, in hopes of being able to find a definition that would define my own life as normal. Guess what? Society doesn't see my life as "normal." The only thing that fits the society definition of normal is my marriage. And that's only because we are a hetero-sexual couple. (disclaimer: I don't view any type of marriage as normal. Marriage is marriage, and society really shouldn't have a say in who can marry who.)

I finally found a definition that defines my life as normal!
–adjective
1. conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural.
Since this definition doesn't say common type of what, I can only believe it is categorical. For example, eggs. The common type would be white, non-organic chicken eggs. So, I do hear by define my family as normal. We have a common family with a child with special needs. We meet the standard type of "special needs family." (but then you have to wonder...if 80-85% of families end in divorce, does that now make us not normal because we are still married? Maybe we aren't the common type.)

And so, I am lead back to Mr. Jamieson's 9th grade English class. Normal is a Myth. Since the common type of things is changing all the time, how can we define something as normal? If we all started buying organic brown chicken eggs, the white one's would no longer be considered normal. So there you have it. If you define normal as conforming to the common type, and the common type is constantly changing, what are we supposed to conform to? I think that everyone should sit down and define your own normal. What's wrong with having 6,775,235,741 different definitions for one word?

1 comment:

  1. I always find it humorous when I describe my 10 year old as the “normal” one, as opposed to my daughter who has Rett Syndrome. I definitely make sure to include the air quotes around the word.

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