All through my life I've been trying very hard to avoid doing what was expected of me. It started in high school. A beet root and mayonnaise sandwich for lunch? Weird, yuck, gross! That's not normal! No my fellow classmates, not your ordinary sandwich perhaps, but it sure is delicious! I was against nuclear weapons in The Netherlands and went off to demonstrate. That was not the norm in my community. Their idea of rational behaviour was the threat to fight in the Old Testament way: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And I was living in the Bible Belt where you would suspect a more New Testament approach, about Jesus and turning the other cheek!
Currently a number of things are seen as ordinary. Imprisoning foreign children with their parents because they don't carry the right papers. Trade ecosystems for monocultures. Buying way too cheap clothes, ignorance is bliss. Extracting gas even when that causes buildings to collapse. Keeping coal fired power stations open knowing they're old fashioned and polluting. And when you see something you don't wish to see or acknowledge, just look away. Had Malala Yousefzai acted normal, she would have died.
In my opinion acting normal is nothing more than doing what others want you to do. Regardless of those others ever thinking about anything or whether they are just letting fear and pettiness rule their decisions; the innovator, the explorer, the artist. These are not the ones who act normal because it is in their blood to be different, to walk the unfamiliar path. A popular Dutch saying is: "Just act normal, that's already crazy enough". Closely followed by: "Don't stand out from the crowd". Both phrases don't really encourage innovation, problem-solving or the development of a new perception. The cry for the normality is more likely a pursuit of mediocrity.
To be able to reveal novelties, you have to alter your expectations, think out of the box. Combine intelligence and creativity and look at the old and familiar subjects from a curious and open minded perspective.
Let us strive for excellence, dream of a fantastic world free from war and destruction. Let's brainstorm at various locations and really come up with a plan. It's an historical fact that war is accepted as normal We are facing some really big problems right now and we will all be doomed if we don't get to work on them. Climate change and the age old battle between Christians and Muslims. We must gather all our talents and courage and put our effort into adjusting that. And then we will remember what it really meant to act normal.
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