Normalcy.

"Normal is a cycle on the washing machine. There is no such thing when it comes to human beings."
-Trisha Goddard

I love quotes like this one, so down-to-earth, yet so profound. But in a crazy way, it makes more sense to compare a human to an inanimate object than to other humans. While man-kind has spent centuries perfecting technologies to measure tangible objects, it remains impossible to measure every aspect of the human being.

Sure, we can calculate age, height, and weight, develop personal preferences, identify blood type and IQ. But what about the emotions? How can one measure sadness? Frustration? Love? How can one person's feelings possibly compare to another's? Everybody experiences these feelings, but who is to say that one person feels more frustrated than somebody else?

Plain and simple, there are aspects of humans that cannot be assessed. If we can't be measured in these ways, why is every single human contrasted with the infamous amplitude of "normalcy?"

What the heck determines "normal??" Well, the dictionary definition of normal is "conforming to the standard or the common type."

Conforming, as you already know due to the "-ing ending," is a verb, as in, something we actively perform. We are the ones creating this false quantification. We are doing this to ourselves!

Let's change this. Let's learn to recognize the immeasurables, the feelings. Pretend you have had a bad day; you lost your dog and failed a quiz in math. Later that day, you are walking down the hallway and you see someone alone, crying. Does it really matter if they had a worse day than you did in order to feel their emotions and reach out to them? Personally, I don't think so. I don't think it is fair at all to compare one person's emotions to my own, because somehow, in their own way, that pain or frustration or happiness is just as consuming as my own.

Every one has their own strengths and struggles. For instance, a person might have a social disorder, like Autism, causing them to behave differently in social situations than someone without a social disorder. It's not appropriate to judge this person as normal or not normal, just because their abilities are different than the abilities of others. This is a very specific example, but as I have said in past blogs, you can never assume what people are really going through. This being said, it is unfair to judge people as normal or not based on information about that that you may or may not even be aware of.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that it's not possible to compare someone else's feelings or troubles with your own. There are just somethings that cannot, and maybe should not, be measured. Maybe it's a good thing to have differences that can't be tangibly compared and contrasted as better, worse or equal. Maybe life provides us all with the ultimate challenge of acceptance of one another, urging us to challenge "normalcy."