Have you noticed how we only take certain things seriously when they go wrong on us or when we’ve clocked up enough years of wisdom-gathering?
Matthew drinks around 5 litres of coke every day, he’s as skinny as a rake and really intelligent. He doesn’t eat any fresh fruit, exercises with a joystick in front of a computer and has the clearest skin and brightest eyes I’ve ever seen. Lucky devil…
I talked to him about making a few lifestyle changes and as he replied, I could hear the echoes of my own teenage know-it-all’ness living on through his words.
“There’s nothing wrong with me… yeah, yeah… I can drink however much I want and I feel great… I’m in tip-top shape and absolutely normal…”
Matthew’s doing what we all do. He’s taking an inventory of himself and he’s automatically discarding the information that has become so normal that it doesn’t even stand out any more.
That’s information like:
- His sluggish digestive system
- Stomach cramps
- Sleeping entire weekends because he feels lethargic
- Feeling cold constantly
He feels normal because he’s turned these “problems” into a part of his character and he doesn’t think about them as something he can change. If he feels normal WITH these issues, imagine how he’d feel WITHOUT these issues.
Matthew chose to work on making some lifestyle changes and readjusting priorities that brought him to a new level of normality.
He said to me “I’m so glad I stopped playing pretend-normal.”
Have you caught yourself playing pretend-normal?
~
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Interesting article Reeta.
“Pretend normal” got me thinking about “assumed normal” instead, which, inn my definition is perhaps the same thing as Matthew was referring to. “Assumed normal” is a non-conscious pretend – i.e. we really don’t know any better.
An example in my mind at the moment is vision. I’m pretty short-sighted, and I was part way through primary school when I came downstairs one morning to find that my parents had rigged up a simple eye chart on the kitchen wall. When asked which letters I could read on the chart from the doorway, my answer was close to “what chart?”. I’d probably assumed that the blurry vision I had was normal, simply because I knew no different.
I’m thinking about this at the moment whilst watching my 13-week old develop. How will he know that his sight is “normal”? At what point, and in what circumstances do we challenge what has been the norm for us and ask whether it really is “normal”.
Lots to think about – thanks for being thought-provoking yet again…
Simon.
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Hi Simon
Thanks for sharing that. Yes, Matthew’s “pretend normal” is referring to the same thing as “assumed normal”
I like where you have gone with your comment – thinking about your little baby and the questions you posed, here’s another one for you… to what extent does our own perception of normal shape abilities that would otherwise lie dormant?
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