What Is Normal?

Thoughts on Lyle Lovett’s hair

Journal: 8 September, 2024, morning.

What’s normal? No, seriously, what does that even mean?

(I know, I know, it means conforming to a standard, but whose standard? Who gets to set the standard?)

How this all began: looking just now at a photo of Lyle Lovett, more specifically, at his hair. Now there’s some *hair* in the most undoubtful way. Statement hair. I am delighted by it. It deserves a name and a C.V. and perhaps a mention by Steven Colbert.

Where was I? Circling around normal, yes. Which is really circling around conformity.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Brits who have the oddest and most peculiar (see how I snuck that in there) of hobbies, or collections, or lifestyles. There’s a couple who live as though it were 1925, or as close to that as they can get. Or the woman who lives with over a thousand dolls in her home. Dolls everywhere. Or the person who only ate one food their entire adulthood.

Take you, there. Take what’s normal for you. Compare it to what’s normal for me. I’d be amazed if they were similar. How could they be? We’re different people.

Normal changes with the breeze blowing, with the wind, with the seasons. Why is it such a thing? Why does the group (any group) soundly thump anyone they deem “not normal” and summarily cast them out? Off the island?

When we look at other people, we are always delighted to see ourselves in them, right? Something we recognize. It’s highly pleasurable when that happens. Kindred spirits and all that.

Points of conformity with others, definitions of normal, those somehow combine uneasily in this tribal life we share here. I am reminded of that funny but true maxim to “be yourself,” but, no, not *that* self.”

It’s belonging, not wanting to be cast out into the darkness, looking longingly back at the lighted cave entrance, at the warmth and companionship there. Fear of rejection. It’s an old one.

All this, from Lyle Lovett’s hair.

I think a lot.

#journalingalife