“Normal”

Listen: we need to talk. Now, I see you shifting uncomfortably in your seat (or on your bed — I won’t judge), but I swear this isn’t THAT kind of talk. Oh no, my sweet little web crawler! (Hah, I know my audience isn’t human, and I won’t pretend it is!) People sling around this word “normal” like it actually has some sort of meaning. Several languages use the same spelling, but the definition remains the same regardless: “conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected” (Oxford English Dictionary). In my words, that means: “just a word in the dictionary.”

Who decides what is normal and what isn’t? Charles Addams’ iconic character, Morticia Addams, famously stated, “what is normal to the spider is chaos to the fly.” Imagine that sense of normalcy now — who am I to say what should be normal, and the same goes for anyone else! Perhaps the most prominent example of “normal” is the concept of neurotypical behavior versus neurodivergent behavior. We tend to see depictions of neurodiversity as a flaw, a disability; but what if these were viewed through a different lens? What if we reframed the way we treated things like Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)? It has been posited that variations ADHD served as adaptations to help early humans detect danger and be more alert. The different levels of Autism do not always present as the non-verbal individual incapable of living life on their own, and we cannot continue assuming that these neurodivergent traits always present the same. In that same regard, we cannot assume that a person lacks value simply because they do not meet someone’s arbitrary definition of “normal.”

Alternatively, people automatically assume if you’re not “normal” that you’re “weird.” What the hell is that?! Once again, who determines what constitutes “weird” versus “normal”? I enjoy cosplay, but some muscular man might enjoy wearing his favorite sports team’s jerseys — are we really that different? Obviously, there are “red lines” we should all mutually agree upon, but this isn’t that type of outlet (by the way, now is a great time to remind you that I pay for the hosting and domain name here, so actually I do make the rules and will absolutely silence anyone unwilling to play nicely here). However, we need to be mindful and open to people having different neurological patterns much in the same way we accept that someone likes sports over comics or anime! The concept is no different than remembering that we need the janitor and the garbage collectors just as much as we need the doctors and the engineers. We need the teachers just as much as we need the cashiers. We function as a society because we are different! Each of us has our own “normal,” and that is to be celebrated, not shunned.