How Strong Do You Really Want To Have To Be?

The title is a line in an episode from S3 of House. He’s trying to persuade the dwarf mother of a normal girl they had all thought had dwarfism to take the growth hormone that will let her grow into a normal girl. At first the mother is against it. Then House lets loose.

“You and I know that being Normal sucks, because we’re freaks, and the good thing about being a freak is that it makes you strong. Now how strong do you really want her to have to be?”

The mother thinks for a moment, then approves the treatment.

Was that moment was some moment of writer’s luck, when the words seem to produce themselves? Or was it from someone’s experience? It was from mine.

Being strong in the manner House means is a non-stop effort. Not exhausting, but tiring. Giving up for a moment means sinking into debilitating self-pity, and the only person who can pull yourself back up by your own hair is you. Nobody else can help you with it, because it’s like holding your stomach in all the time: the only person who can do it is you.

People only live like that because they have to, and they know there’s nothing noble or dignified about it. Being strong-like-a-freak isn’t a virtue, it’s tiring, a continual drain of energy, leaving less for relationships or interests. Nobody who had experienced it would want that for someone they loved. Which is why the mother relents.

The best thing about being a Normie, it seems to me, is that they don’t have any reason to try. Take one look at them. The people staying in shape in the gym, the people doing professional qualifications to get ahead, the competitors, the people with absorbing interests, the Suffering and Recovering Anonymouses, let alone the people with non-standard desires... none of these are Normies. Every now and then a Normie will suprise me by having done something I thought was a Non-Normie Thing, but then I can tell the Normie Didn’t Connect with whatever it was.

When I was a suffering drunk I wanted to be a Normie: smug, self-satisfied, lacking any self-consciousness and doubt. Now I’m a recovering alcoholic and much older, I am so glad I’m not a Normie. Because if I had been a Normie, I would have got married, and then maybe divorced, or would now be living with an old woman. Eeeuugh.

I’ll take the continual drain of being strong if that’s the alternative. The occasional dip into self-pity isn’t pleasant, but it doesn’t last long. Do I think you should do it? If you don’t have a reason, no, you should not. It’s so much easier being a Normie.