Why do I feel like such a misfit when everyone else seems so normal?
This might seem like a good question, but frankly? There are SO many problems with it, I hardly know where to start.
As I so often say, you’ve gotta start with the words themselves—the words and their definitions, and their vibration. From there, you can move on into perspective.
Let’s take “normal,” just for starters. If there was ever a word more misused, abused, and confused, I don’t know what that would be. I mean, I can see in the scientific world how there would be a use for describing cells as “normal” and “abnormal,” as in, “works” and “doesn’t work.” That makes sense. In fact, it’s downright logical.
But beyond the scientific world in its most concrete, isolated form, who can possibly judge what’s normal and what’s not? Everyone does it, sure, but no one knows what it even looks like.
Now, if we’re talking about being in alignment or authenticity of loving intention—well then, I can jump on that bandwagon with the best of them. But when it comes to opining whether someone else is normal or circumstances are normal, I for one am hard-pressed to go along with a judgment based on a third party’s assessment based on their assessment, acceptance, or rejection of their own circumstances, upbringing, and/or belief system.
Convoluted though that sentence may be, let’s be clear that it means exactly what it says” You don’t get to judge whether I’m normal or not and I don’t get to judge whether you are. I have the right to judge, I suppose, but not to believe that just because I pass judgment that I’m right in my determination.
Because there is no normal, no one can be normal.
If no one is normal—because there is no such thing—then no one can possibly be a misfit. Misguided, maybe. Sensitive, perhaps. Socially inept, okay. But the only thing that creates misfits is the judgment of others based on their own misguided, often vague, definitely small-minded definition of normal.
Does it sound like I’m kind of miffed? That’s because I am.
Having felt like a misfit, lived like a misfit, and judged myself as a misfit for many decades—regardless of my success, stature, acceptance, or appearance—the really sad thing is how the label becomes who you are.
I know I’m proselytizing. Believe me, I know. But I am so tired of so many people being bullied and labeled and blamed and hurt and just plain unappreciated. When we talk about celebrating diversity, we need to start at a much lower baseline. Race, ethnicity, economic status, gender…we need to talk about it all. We need to stand up and teach our children to value their innate Intuitive Logic as much—or more—than their regular logic. Because regular logic is not the stuff that makes the human human. And cannot possibly transcend the challenges of being human and transform those challenges into opportunities.
Not without compassion. Not without empathy. Not without Intentional Tuning of the Logical Empath.
