What's Normal?

There are two schools of thought about the existence of “normal”. The first is that there's no such thing, and the second is that there is, but you have to be a fuck-up or excellent to know it. I subscribe to the second school.

Normal isn't about what you are, what you do or what's happened to you, it's about how it affects you, how you handle it and how you carry yourself in this world. To keep it simple: normal people don't go in for any extreme behaviour, and don't have extreme and lasting reactions to the indignities, insolences and incompetencies of life. If you're a normal person, all but the most dramatic events in life roll off your back like water off a duck's back, leaves you pretty much unchanged. The world as seen by normal people is an impersonal place and much of what happens in it is not the result of human agency, so they don't take anything personally and don't get upset when things don't work. Normal people accept that when they and other normal people go to work, they are bound by the rules of the institution for which they work and are therefore not responsible for doing bad things to people during working hours. They didn't, after all, make the rules.

Not-normal people see a world made by people, in which most events happen because someone decided that or not, did or didn't do, thought of or ignored something that made whatever it was happen. Someone made the rules. Someone decided to spend the money on the roof not the medicines, the computer systems not the number of social workers. Someone left the train full of discarded newspapers from last night, and those parents definitely decided to bring their child on this eleven-hour flight, where it is keeping us all awake with its crying and squalling.

Normal doesn't mean ordinary, dull or conventional. It doesn't mean well-behaved, it doesn't even mean particularly moral. Normal people can be into BDSM or missionary sex once a month, or just have given up. They can like spicy food and flamenco or white food and Big Brother. They can be graphic artists, plumbers, driving instructors and bus drivers – but mostly they work in central and local government, the NHS, education, banks and other large institutions. They can be spiteful, kind, honest, boot-lickers, creeps or stand-up guys. They drive at thirty-five in a thirty-zone and occasionally park really badly.

What they don't do is steal from the supermarket or drive at sixty past a school at tipping-out time. They don't sell drugs to schoolchildren and they don't get into fights because they like it. Normal people aren't alcoholics, junkies, degenerate gamblers and people who sleep with anyone they pick up just so they don't have to be alone. They don't have a DSM-IV personality disorder (you have to be seriously messed-up to have one of those). They don't grieve too long, hold grudges too long and get upset when you downsize them.

That's the good news. On the other hand, they aren't on the Olympic squad, don't know any chess opening more than about four moves deep and they don't even get to the heats of a major music competition. The highs and lows of human achievement and failure are not theirs. No-one in a Western professional Armed Service is normal: the standards and risks are way too high.

This may seem a little unfair on normal people: can't they achieve excellence as well? Bluntly, no. Being good is one thing, being excellent takes another one or two orders of magnitude of practice, dedication and single-mindedness, which means far more time than most people will have after they pay proper attention to their everyday lives. John Coltrane was a finer man than many of us, but even the other jazz musicians noticed he practiced a lot. CEO's who do nothing but work aren't normal either, nor are creative mathematicians (who will tell you that you have to work six days a week just to stay in the game). They may be having fun and could not think of anything better to do, but they are not “normal” - and thank God for it.

After you're twenty or so, you're either normal or not. Whatever it is that turns people not-normal has happened – and maybe it was the genes – and cannot be undone. Nor can being normal. You can change the details of your behaviour, your style and manner, but not the fundamental emotional reactions, and you can hope that whatever it is that will reveal you as a not-normal will never actually happen. A friend of mine back in the day once said: “inside all of us is a normal person screaming to get out”. The more I see, the more I think this is not true. Everyone goes off the rails, the only question is when and for how long. Normal people get back on fairly quickly, while the rest of us are de-railed for life. Some of us were never on the damn rails in the first place.