I have a friend who's been through it with me. Together we explored and drank and listened, had adventures and made terrible mistakes. Nowadays, he's better friends with my wife than he is with me. Not that we've grown apart, it's just that they've grown closer. It's a thing of beauty, to have two worlds integrate like that. I mostly marvel at the setup, and am grateful for it.
Yesterday I did not feel that way. They were chatting about an old memory, one that predates her presence in my life. She asked him about my shenanigans, and he didn't remember most of them. All he could remember was a single moment, where I had written a poem and recited it. They laughed about how hard it is “to put up with” me.
They both groaned at my eccentricity.
--
Desperate for safety, we love things that are normal. It's an urge that is probably evolutionary in its origin--familiar roads that didn't lead to pain can be traveled again without fear of harm. Well-trodden topics are comforting; we can let our guard down and let the conversation guide us, rather than the other way around.
Conversations like this are safe, but also boring. When humans trade shared, mundane experiences it's not very interesting. What have you been watching lately? or Did you hear the latest news about Andy? or I heard the Campbell Bridge is closed. Boring. We reach into our experiences and search for the things we have in common with others. This holds a sense of safety--we walk on known paths through familiar environs. But I also find it aggravating when the conversation dwells there indefinitely.
I enjoy taking conversations off the path, into the wilderness of divergent experiences and misaligned perspectives. Not always, of course: it takes a lot of energy to explore. We simply can't live on asymptotes, traveling wildly off the beaten path at all times. It's exhausting, and exposes us to pain. Things need to return to center--the mundane has utility, and it's own marvelous brand of beauty.
But the most memorable nights are the ones spent in wonder at a new point of view. The conversations that cause us to grow are the ones that expose us to the abnormal.
I figured this out a while ago, and embraced it. I let myself be weird, in the hopes of being a spice for others. It's like taking off my jacket in the cold--everyone suddenly has something to talk about, and I have a simultaneously refreshing and painful experience.
It's disappointing to be picked on for this. After all, by expending energy to be unusual I'm providing a sort of service, playing the part of yeast in a slosh of white flour and tepid water. Without me, they'd have just spent another 25 minutes comparing notes on Tiger King.
But normal is safe. Though there are decades between now and the middle school playground that mercilessly punished the abnormal, the experience was formative. Normal is wired into our brains, tyrannical in its rule. Normal imposes its rule in the halls of every palace. All must bow to the Average.
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I am affected by this swirl--pulled in two directions. I crave adventure and beauty, earnest to follow the sun over the horizon. But I'm also sleepy and afraid, longing to give up traveling against the flow. I'm regularly faced with a choice about what kind of me I ought to be.
The deciding factor is time. I don't have long: some fraction of 90 years. What will be accomplished in that time? What is my life worth?
It's worth the effort, the pursuit of the abnormal and the beautiful. It's worth the fight, the turning of cheeks when slapped by those afraid of otherness. It's worth being authentically abnormal, beautifully distinct.
That's something that we all can share.
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