A recent discussion with a friend got me thinking all philosophical like…

This friend was telling me how they occasionally felt paranoid, and possibly even shut out by those around them.  It’s something I deal with daily, but have learnt to accept.  I’m still a loner, still someone who likes to find my own path sometimes, but I do acknowledge that I suffer from occasional bursts of paranoia and sensitivity.  I have learnt to deal with it through being aware of a few key things, things which are philosophically based, and which help me to not only be more accepting and more tolerant, they have taught me to see the forest as well as the trees, they have taught me that my own opinion is just as valid as anyone elses.

So…  What is normal anyway?  The dictionary says:

nor·mal

However that doesn’t really define normal does it?  In fact it points to normal just being a statistically agreed upon average.  When we are talking about Normal as a state of being, then how can that have a statistical average?  What would have had to have taken place is that a group of people have categorised personalities, and placed them on a scale.  Is that normal?  Maybe someone will elaborate on this for us later, however I shall continue.  So we have all these categories, then how do we work out what’s normal and whats not?  Surely that just comes down to a popularity contest?

After all, isn’t democracy based on a popularity contest?  You vote for the party, the group that you feel is offering the best chance for things to work in your favour.  Maybe things don’t work out, and their are more people voting for someone else…  you discover you are in a minority…  Maybe your perspective changes, you feel that maybe you are wrong in your thoughts and you want to be where all the cool people are…  So next time around you vote to win, to be on the winning side.  Some people sacrifice their values to be what they believe is right, what they believe is right is not always controlled by them, but by those who control the information, those who make things popular.  But I digress…  Popularity influences Normalcy, Normalcy influences Popularity.

In my humble opinion Douglas Adams was closer to the answer to the ultimate question than we would be happy to admit.  Forty Two…  That IS the answer, but what is the question?  What IS Normal?  What is life?  Isn’t Normalcy really just a matter of perspective?  Our lives lead us to live by a set of morals, we develop our own code.  But isn’t that code just as unique as DNA?  35 Years I have lived…  and even if I had a cojoined twin brother born at the same time, joined at the hip who shared every experience I did, he would never share the same perspective of life, his would always be about 18 inches to the side.  Perspective moulds us into what we are.  Sure we can have similar experiences that effect us in very similar ways, but no matter what, we are all unique, our life experiences are unique our moral code is unique, our opinions.  No two people have the same perspective on life, the universe and everything.  So what does that mean?

That means that everything I have just writtten here is written from my heart, from my perspective, and it is part of my code.  It is my opinion.  Whether it is Right…  whether it is normal doesn’t actually matter.  For it is Normal to me, and whilst it might spark some judgement in yourself, it it cannot change the fact that that the time of writing it is what I call normal.  Now that said, other peoples opinions of normal might differ, and if they express them in an orderly and understandable way…  it might actually shift my understanding of normal.  If they express them as an opinion that is right, and the only opinion that matters, then I’m just likely to think they are are slightly deranged and have no sense of how the world about the really works.  But thats just me.

What’s your Normal? ;)

As yet another Hallmark inspired day proaches, I ponder the wonderful man that is my father.  Like all of us he has his flaws, his vises and his adorable qualities…  Though all of these are simply from my own perspective.  insomnier has given me time tonight to mull over my  times with the man that is my father, sorting out the issues that to this day mean that while I love him dearly and wish to be able to spend more time with him, I find myself having little in common with him.  I have thought about how I believe his life has moulded mine and about how his influences have made me into the man I am today.

The thing I discovered is that I’m not all that different than the cliche that TV seems to show us.  Life it seems tends to drive our fathers away from us, turning them into serious men who need to work for a living and have less and less time for the little things in life.  Is this the culture of Australia these last 30 years?  Or is this just the results of the situations that life seems to put us in.  Am I destined to repeat my parents mistakes?  Personally I don’t think so…  personally I believe that as children we our lives are moulded from the success and failure of our parents.  Some of us strive not to do the things that our parents did that hurt us, some of us seem destined to repeat them.

My childhood wasn’t the happiest of childhoods, I grew up for the first 6 years of my life in what I saw as a loving family.  My father would spend time with us, and would include us in his life.  In those days he was an entertainer, an avid folk musician and someone who loved to entertain people.  He was an actor in the pantomime scene when I was starting school, and this made for some great times as we would get to be involved in him making costumes and props for the shows.  Sure, getting involved meant watching from a distance and maybe playing after, but he made us feel special by including us.

This was a great way to grow up as a kid, but unfortunately it wasn’t able to support a family of five.  I guess Dad needed to make more money to be able to support us, which meant a serious job.  Unfortunately a serious job meant moving us from Brisbane to Melbourne, and it also meant that Dad was working serious hours, you know… the whole 9 to 5 thing.  It was serious and that turned him into a serious person.  One who needed to make money so that his family could live in a house, eat food and well, maybe have a little money left over to do things on the weekends.  Does this sound familiar?

Watching life happen around me these days I can see that the failed marriage, the trying to spend time with us but also trying to juggle work, a new girlfriend, and the expense of still having to support a family is really just par for the course.  But it’s taken over 30 years for this realisation to come to me.  Anyway, back to the story…

The thing is..  the seriousness of life seemed to seep into my father and my new step-mother.  Whilst they tried and well, did a damn good job of spending time with us, and ensuring that we knew we were loved, we could always tell that the seriousness of their jobs was something that effected them more than they were willing to admit.  Now, before I go on, I have to admit that we got to a point where we were only seeing them on School holidays, as they were living in Sydney and well..  we were in Melbourne and then back to Brisbane.  Looking back now, I can see that they must have tried really hard to for those one or two week long periods when we stayed with them.

From my perspective the seriousness of life and the way that my father and step mother seemed to believe was a good way to bring up kids seemed to clash.  Sure there were great times, and they were no where near as serious as I have seen some other parents.  However I believe it affected me, and I believe the seriousness that was thrust at me during my childhood was the reason that these days I find it hard to take life too seriously.  Life is here to be enjoyed, and kids are here to remind us of that.  I believe that my father is just begining to realise that these days, and I also believe that I have little right to judge him for his seriousness when I have not taken the time to settle down and raise a family myself.  Really though, I don’t judge him or my step-mother at all, how can I when I have not walked in their shoes, lived life through their eyes, or felt the weight of responsibility on their shoulders.  I cannot.  What I can do is attempt to understand their perspective, their decisions in life, and learn from that.

Do I blame them for how I turned out?  Hell yes!  As I blame everyone who has had influence in my life through the years.  But blame is such a harsh word and I feel that I have turned out OK so far, so whilst I blame these people, I also thank them, I thank all of you who have had some influence over who I have become, but most of all I thank my Dad.  His seriousness might make it hard for us to find topics of conversation, but it has turned me into the person I am today, and I love him for that, and for him just being him.