Let me begin by thanking the astonishing number of you who took the time to reach out to me to wish our cat, Beau, well.  In my last essay on Surrender I shared that Beau had taken ill and we were on an unknown pathway.  It was a lesson in surrendering control, taking things day by day, and not getting ahead of what we knew.  Unfortunately, in the short time between publishing that essay and starting to write this one, Beau’s health declined rapidly.  After three visits to the Emergency Vet to drain fluid building in his chest cavity and long discussions with both our vet and the surgeon about what might lie ahead for him, we made the hard yet compassionate decision to let him go.  Last Wednesday morning, we dripped tears onto our little boy’s head as we soothed him across the rainbow bridge.  His breathing slowed as his little body relaxed and he finally rested.  We are simply heartbroken.  His is a gentle soul, gone way too soon.  We just didn’t have enough Time with him, although we got an awful lot of love out of those five short years he was ours.

It’s no secret to anyone that time is the great leveler.  No matter how much money or power or influence you have, you cannot reverse time or make it stand still.  Sure, there are things you can do to improve the quality of the time you have or to get more out of time, but you can’t control it.  Ignoring the detailed physics of Einstein’s space/time continuum for the moment, time marches linearly forward for us.  What we do with the time we have is mostly up to us.

I think back to the late 90’s when I was living in Mexico on an expat assignment.  I lived in an area about two hours north of Mexico City that is a beautiful place.  It’s far enough south to never get too cold; it’s high enough in elevation to never get too hot; and, it’s in a semi-arid climate so it never got too humid.  I was living in eternal springtime.  I would take walks, saying to myself, “Appreciate this EVERY DAY.  You are living in paradise and it won’t last forever.”  I didn’t, of course, appreciate it every day.  There was work and the stressors of living in a foreign country and I would find myself missing “home” regularly.  But there were also many, many days of joy when I did indeed remember my mantra to appreciate each day there.  I knew time was limited.  I wanted to eke out as much happiness as I could.

I am not breaking any new philosophical ground by writing on this topic.  We all know that time is a limited commodity and that we should take the time to stop and smell the roses.  And we all get lost in day-to-day minutia that keeps us from focusing on the joy.  I’m writing about this right now simply because I feel that lesson very acutely.  I am navigating all the “firsts” without Beau.  The first morning without feeding him breakfast.  The first time going to put in eye drops and not having him follow me to get Greenies, which are on the shelf below my drops.  The first time sitting in the lounger in the bedroom where he always would jump up and snuggle me.  While I tried to appreciate each interaction, there were certainly times when I’d push him off of my lap because I wanted to get up or he was chewing my headphone cord while I was on a Zoom call with my college friends.  I don’t think I ever missed appreciating his cuteness, which is why Facebook will remind me of him several times a month for the rest of my own life.  (How many pictures can I post of one cat?  A lot.)  I just figured I’d have him for at least 10 more years than I did.

When I was a kid, time seemed to go so slowly.  There was no problem living in the present.  Summers lasted forever.  At the beginning of each school year, it seemed like an eternity had passed, in good part because everyone seemed to change so much over those short summer months.  Four years of high school and four years of college seemed to pass slowly (compared to how time passes now), probably because we packed so much living into those years.  I was growing by leaps and bounds, each year bringing such different challenges.  Now, of course, four years passes in the blink of an eye.  Trish and I have been married (mentally calculating) over six years.  I feel like we just met last year!  And yet, reminders of the passage of time are all around.

We spent the weekend at a family wedding and I was acutely aware of several aspects of passing time.  First, I must say it was a very…regular…wedding.  I use “regular” purposefully, instead of “normal”.  It was in a beautiful setting; there were around 200 people representing four generations; there were two beaming sets of parents; there were neighbors and relatives and friends; there was a charming and funny rabbi (as all good rabbis are) under a chupah draped with tallitot from both families.  The only thing a little “not regular” was that there were two brides.  Everything else, and I mean EVERYTHING, was just as you’d expect from a joyous family wedding.  I marveled at the passing of time and was so happy that these women could experience something I never could have even imagined when I was their age.  I have to admit that, in some ways, I was jealous.  While there are still certainly barriers and struggles to being gay in this world, they came of age at a time when they could date and learn how to be in a healthy relationship in a reasonably supportive atmosphere and this gives me hope that their union will truly last.

I was also acutely aware of how the passage of time changed how my generation approached these family lifecycle events.  When our generation was “the kids,” we ran around and danced and played.  At the Sunday morning brunch, the brides were telling us about the after-party and the after-after-party.  We were in bed by 11:00 and proud of ourselves for staying up that late!  Now, we’re the “parents”.  The music WE liked was played early.  Later on, when the band was playing music we didn’t know, we sat at the tables and talked—just like our parents did.  That “cousin” bond is still strong; it’s just different now.

So, as I settle back into my usual schedule, I am reminding myself to be present.  I feel like I lost so much precious time in my adult life waiting for something to happen—to get through college or grad school or through a work assignment that was not very fulfilling.  I kept hoping I’d be happier when I reached some goal or when something difficult (sometimes a relationship!) would draw to a close.  It took meeting Trish for me to realize that this is it:  each day mattered.  I’ll be sad about Beau for a while, I know, but Bridget is still here and needs lots of love.  She is a bit out of sorts, but is adjusting.  I think her biggest issue is that she now only gets to eat one cat’s worth of food since her brother is no longer leaving leftovers for her.  Loss is a part of life and I know there is more loss to come.  But there is also more joy, like this weekend’s wedding.  Stay present, Sherri.  There is still time.

When we last left our Abecedarium (well, after a brief detour to praise Lisa Scottoline), I was reflecting on Reflection—which is big for me this time of year.  As we wound that essay down, I teased that I would write this time on Surrender as I work to learn how to let go and accept what I cannot control.  That is a profound topic during these Days of Awe (the 10 days on the Jewish calendar that begin with Rosh Hashanah and end with Yom Kippur).  It is a time of deep reflection, evaluation, and commitment to personal growth and Gd’s commandments.  As I noodled on surrender these past couple of weeks, the universe has brought me several examples to share and learn from.

I began my thinking with observing when I find it easy to surrender.  There are not many examples; however, one my regular readers are already aware of is spin class.  I have been a lifelong exerciser (at varying levels of intensity and commitment) in good part because of my ability to surrender during a workout.  I will admit that approximately 10 out of 10 times, I don’t want to go to the Y.  Even if I’m looking forward to a workout, when I am in my jammies sipping a cup of coffee and reading my daily comics, the thought of working up the energy to sweat (or even just to stretch) is a monstrous barrier.  But I go through the process of brushing my teeth, putting on workout clothes and driving to the Y knowing that I can just surrender to the instructor.

I learned several years ago that I need an instructor or trainer to get my best workouts.  It is amazing what I will do in the gym when someone else tells me to do it (versus what I can motivate myself to do).  I think it’s because it feels good to just surrender the responsibility to someone else.  I can shut down my frontal lobe and go.  Nowhere is that more evident than in spin class, as I detailed in my essay on Flow.  At the end of those classes, I am physically drained yet mentally energized.  In that instance, surrender is easy because I have trust in the instructor, and I do know that if I really, really need to pull back that I can.  That trust and knowledge of an “out” allows me to relax and give my all.  If only surrendering in other parts of my life was as easy.

Last time, I introduced surrender in the context of learning to not force control in every aspect of my life.  Much of that need to control, I know, comes from fear of being blindsided by an action of another or confronted with something I didn’t know I didn’t know.  I feel compelled to make sure those situations never happen or, if they do, work to right that wrong.  But no matter how much I want to control those situations, sometimes I just can’t and I have to surrender to it.  I have to let it go.  Lordy, that’s hard!  And one of those situations popped up this past week.

I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a Friend Recommendation for someone that I had already been Facebook friends with for years.  This is not a close friend, but someone I worked with at Air Products for years and years and someone I considered more than just a colleague.  She is someone I admire and whose respect I was eager to earn and retain.  I checked my friend list and, sure enough, she wasn’t on it.  Then I noticed I lost a subscriber to the blog.  Were the two related?  When did she unfriend me?  Why?  Was it something I wrote in a blog post or posted on Facebook?  I try not to be controversial, but I am pretty honest and know that people won’t agree with everything I write.  But her?  I thought we were of like minds.  (I don’t know if she is the subscriber I lost because they’ve “updated” the website managing tools in such a way that I can’t figure out how to see my complete subscriber list.)  I stewed over this for days.  OK, I’m still stewing over this.  “What did I do?!” I keep asking myself.  I have toyed with sending her a message, asking if I wrote something to offend her.  I mean, maybe it was a mistake!  Maybe she accidentally unfriended me and the subscriber loss was a coincidence in timing.  Maybe I accidentally unfriended her?  that is when I took a long, slow, deep breath and said, “Let it go, Sherri.”  This is not someone I am close enough with that further steps to find resolution are critical in the grand scheme of things.  I must surrender to the situation.  I can’t control it.  I have to let it go.  But, dammit, it’s hard.

Finally, one more “surrender” challenge popped up yesterday and this is a hard one.  It is also not resolved yet.  We came back from the shore yesterday to take our Maine Coon mix, Beau, to his annual vet appointment.  We’d been concerned about some labored breathing and his attempts at what seemed like trying to get a hairball up to no avail.  The vet took an Xray to find his lungs and chest cavity filled with fluid.  He’s not even six years old!  Is he in heart failure this young?!  They tried to remove some of the fluid but he was too distressed so we took him to an emergency vet.  We knew he’d need to stay at least overnight, so we left him there and came home.  I don’t know how parents of sick children are able to put one foot in front of another, much less breathe.  Kissing him goodbye last night, knowing there was a chance he wouldn’t even make it through the aspiration, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  I’m crying as I type these words, even.  I keep thinking that Gd takes the holiest and best of us during the Hebrew months of Elul and Tishrei, which we are in now.  Beau is the sweetest cat I’ve ever had.  I can’t lose him this soon!  But I must surrender.  Surrender to the skill of the vets.  And surrender to Gd’s will.  He made it through the aspiration.  They removed 200 ml of fluid—almost a cup.  He’ll see the cardiologist today.  We can only take it one step at a time.  We don’t even know how he’s doing this morning, yet, since we can’t call until 9:00 and I’m writing early. 

I know I can’t control this.  In some ways, it’s easier to surrender when it is so clear things are out of your control.  I write to distract myself.  I take deep breaths.  I remind myself that these techniques are important for all of those little things, too.  Slow, deep breaths.  Focus on controlling yourself and your own reactions.  Take action when you can.  In the meantime, surrender.

(Postscript:  As I make my final edits before posting this essay, Beau is back home with us.  We don’t have the answers yet as to why he built up so much fluid.  The cardiologist doesn’t believe his heart disease is advanced enough to have caused it.  He clearly is more comfortable, acting very normal, very snuggly, and Bridget has finally stopped hissing at him.  We go back to talk with a surgeon and get him a CT scan on Wednesday.  We are trying hard to not option sort until we know more.  Meanwhile, I don’t miss a chance to love on him every time I can.)

Back in the early days of the pandemic, I wrote an essay on Balance.  In it, I used the visual of a pendulum instead of a two-pan scale.  Balance, I encouraged you to think, is a dynamic process (like the swinging of a pendulum) and not a static process (like perfectly balancing the weights on a two-pan scale).  The goal, I wrote, is not to achieve some nirvanic state of perfect balance, but to keep the amplitude of the swings to a minimum.

I’ve been noodling a lot on balance, again.  In that earlier essay, I was writing in the context of balancing precautions around exposure to the COVID virus with the need to keep our economy moving a bit and not isolate people too much.  This time, I’ve been thinking more about pendulum swinging.  Why do people seem to drive to extremes so easily?  And how can we dampen that swing to keep the pendulum oscillating more gently around the middle?

I think back to my time living in Mexico.  Since I lived about two hours from the Mexico City airport, guys from the plant where I worked were kind enough to drive me there when I needed to travel.  I lived in Central Mexico, which is clearly the most perfect place on earth.  High enough in elevation to never get too hot; southern enough to never get too cold.  Home were neither heated nor air conditioned.  But what that meant is that drives to the airport on cool winter mornings were an exercise in temperature extremes.  We’d be driving for a bit, freezing, when I’d ask the driver to turn on the heat.  He would turn it on full blast at the highest temperature setting.  After sweating for a while, I’d ask him to turn it down.  But he would turn it off.  There seemed to be nothing in between.  We’d alternatively freeze and sweat for the two-hour drive.  I’m sure, on average, the temperature in the car was comfortable.  But the swings of temperature were not.  The pendulum swung way too wildly when a nudge here and there would have worked much better.

I am a fan of the Art of the Nudge.  Maybe it’s my background as a synthetic organometallic chemist.  When you are trying to measure out exact milligrams of something, you learn to nudge.  Maybe it’s my evolving skills as a cook (not unrelated to my background as a chemist).  When you are cooking, it’s better to nudge the temperature, not cycle between full-on heat and off.  Nudging—small adjustments—work better when you are trying to approach an optimum.  These types of small adjustments also tend to work better to create lasting change.

There is a Japanese concept called “kaizen” that we would all do well to embrace.  This is the practice of making small changes.  Once a small change becomes engrained, you make another small change.  Little by little, you end up with a big change.  There are two advantages to approaching transformation with this method.  The first is that by absorbing small changes, you have a better chance of making them stick.  The second, of course, is that you avoid swinging the pendulum too far and too fast.  Dieting and exercise are two areas where we tend to be pendulum swingers.  When you approach a change in your diet (with the goal of losing weight) by eating restrictive fare, it is not uncommon to lose a bunch of weight and be miserable in the process.  Once the weight is off, too many of us swing the pendulum back to all the foods we love which packed on weight in the first place—and guess what happens?  Making small but permanent changes to how you eat is an example of kaizen.  A two-week juice cleanse is not.  Similarly, I’ve certainly experienced epiphanies around exercise.  I will place a significant expectation/burden on myself around how much I work out and how many days a week such that I either burn out or hurt myself.  Then I end up back on the couch again.  Small changes have a better chance at sticking.  And once you’ve engrained one small change, then you can decide if you want to take on another.

Managing those pendulum swings is easier when you are managing a change within yourself.  Sure, we all get impatient, or greedy, and push that pendulum too far.  We, alone, must deal with the backlash of the swinging pendulum which hopefully encourages moderation.  And many people go through their entire lives swinging from one extreme to another, so “easier” does not mean “easy”.  The real difficulty, though, comes when a change you might be pushing for—a movement of the pendulum to a different balance point—affects others.

Those who push for big changes usually come from one of two camps:  those highly unhappy with the status quo and those who just like to create chaos.  I have some compassion for the former.  I get highly irritated with the latter, so we’re just going to ignore them for the purposes of this essay.  Humans, generally, don’t like change.  We like life to be predictable, within boundaries, because it feels safer.  We like where the pendulum sits and we tolerate only minor swings around that balance point. If you are reasonably comfortable with the status quo, you will generally resist change.  If you are unhappy with the status quo, you will generally push for change and the amplitude of your push is proportional to your unhappiness.  If you are unhappy, you don’t see the current status of the pendulum as swinging gently through a balance point.  You see it as way off balance and want to give it a big push in the other direction.  (“Perspective” is another good “P” word.)  Living in a pluralistic society means that there will always be people who agitate for change and people who are happy with things just as they are.  I would argue that the benefits of living in a pluralistic society are worth it, but that’s a discussion for another time.  (Or maybe never, since my instinct is not to touch that one with a 10 foot pole!)

We have, however, absorbed a stunning amount of change if you view life over a longer time line.  As one example, I am stunned at the advances in LGBTQ+ rights and recognitions in my lifetime.  In fact, just look at how the term itself has evolved!  First, it was about “gay rights”; then “gay and lesbian rights”; then “LGBT”; now “LGBTQ+”—and in many instances even MORE letters that strive to include other marginalized elements of the community.  That does not mean there has not been regression or backlash (two steps forward, one step back).  Each time the term was expanded, each time the pendulum was nudged, there was pushback and it certainly continues today.  But the overall trend has been bravely forward and society is absorbing that change.  In fact, everything that agitates us today has probably been much worse at earlier times in human history.  As a big fan of the Outlander series of books, I have started watching the series on Starzz.  I can only watch it during the day, though, because the degree of violence that was typical of the 1700’s keeps me up at night.  Does that mean that we are done evolving?  No.  Does that mean that all these societal changes have been happily accepted by all?  Clearly not.  If you are the person agitating for change and pushing on that pendulum, remember that small changes are still good and you need to play the long game.  And if you are the person resisting change, try to understand why the status quo doesn’t work for the person pushing the pendulum.  It’s ok to push back a little to moderate the swing but not, generally, to stop it all together.  We all want balance, but it’s a dynamic process.  Just small swings, ok?

I must admit that coming up with words (or phrases) to match the “letter of the day” in our year-long Abecedarium has become a bit of a struggle. I knew it would. Heck, I even used Artificial Intelligence in the form of ChatGPT to help me write my “K” essay.  I’ve kicked around a number of “O” words this week. Obsession. Opportunity. Options. Ownership. Obstacles. Even Onomatopoeia. I was chatting with Trish this afternoon and she uttered a phrase that pulled together my disparate thoughts: “Sometimes,” she said, “you can be your own worst enemy.”  “Yes,” I responded, “but I own it.” That’s it! That what all my thoughts this week have been swirling around. The theme I have been noodling on is how every day, life presents us with opportunities; with options and their attendant consequences. We make choices, good and bad. But we must own those consequences.  It’s what I mean when I say I’m a “no regrets” person: it doesn’t mean I don’t wish things could be different; it means that I accept the consequences of my choices and work to make the best possible outcome out of the situation.

Longtime readers know that a recurring theme in my writing is Personal Accountability. I talk about this not to lecture YOU but to continually remind MYSELF.  I need to remember that life does not happen TO me, that I always have options to sort and choices to make and that, in the end, I have to own those outcomes. (“O” is for Own Your S**t, was the alternate title for this essay.) Case in point: my trip to Atlanta to see family where I am as I draft this essay.

I grew up in Atlanta and most of my immediate family is still there. I venture south every couple of months to visit my sister and my mom. It is no secret to anyone that I don’t like these trips.  That does NOT mean that I don’t want to see my family! I very much love spending time with my sister and mom; I just do not enjoy the process of getting there and then getting home.  I do have options, though.  I could choose not to go, but the consequence would be not seeing Mom and Wendy.  That is not acceptable to me.  I could choose to go less frequently than the approximately every two months I travel there, but the consequence of not seeing them that regularly is also not acceptable to me.  What I do choose is to spend a little more money on plane tickets that 1) allow me to reasonably avoid rush hours in both cities and 2) give me a bit more comfort in flight.  I used to buy the cheapest ticket I could find that got me there and back at reasonable times but found myself mightily agitated at the fight for what little overhead space was available and sitting in seats so close to the row in front of me that my knees touch the seatback even without slouching.  The cost of the upgrade is a consequence that I choose to accept.  Another choice I make, that Wendy never can wrap her head around, is taking a 7:00 am flight back.  I do this for a range of reasons.  First, those first-of-the-morning flights are your best bet for being on time.  Second, getting across town to the airport is easiest before dawn.  Third, the Uber drivers at that time of day are serious about their job and get me there efficiently and usually quietly.  And, finally, when it’s time to go home, I just want to get there.  The consequence of getting up at 3:30 (and not sleeping well BECAUSE I have to get up at 3:30) is acceptable to me.  For my night owl sister, it would be a fate worse than death.  Options and consequences.  Doesn’t mean I always like my choices, but I own them.

We have to sort options and make choices all day every day.  Sometimes the consequences are small:  Do I go to the Good Giant and know I’ll be able to get all I need, or go to the Bad Giant (which is closer) and risk them not having something critical?  Do I have oatmeal for breakfast which I know is healthy, or a breakfast burrito which I know will taste yummy but sit in my stomach like a rock?  Do I get up and feed Bridget now, or tolerate her chewing on my elbow, walking on my head, and generally being a nudge? (Actually, I usually give in on that last one.)  Sometimes the consequences can be significant:  Do I stay in this job or make a change?  Do I marry this person?  Do I run this red light?  I know I can’t eliminate risk from my life.  I have to know the potential consequences of my choices and then own the outcome.

There seems to be something of an epidemic these days of people wanting lots of options but not being willing to accept the consequences of whichever choice they make.  That, as we’ve well established, drives me bonkers.  It can also be dangerous.  Young people make risky choices all the time, mostly because they are not aware of, or have not yet learned to think through, the consequences of their actions.  They get a little bit of a bye from me on the “ownership” piece as they rack up experience (but I expect them to learn from it).  I give no such grace to adults who should know better.  When you have experienced enough to know the potential consequences of your choice, and you make that choice yet complain about the outcome, I have no patience for you.  Own it and deal with it.  Many times when someone says, “I had no choice,” what they are really saying is “I had no other option which involved consequences that I am willing to accept.”  You always have choices, even if your only choice is to accept an outcome and deal with it.  Even not making a decision is making a choice.  Beware of people who always play the victim.  These are usually people who just want to dodge accountability.  (I certainly want to differentiate here when people are truly victimized, which unfortunately does happen.) 

While I huff and puff about the behaviors of others, however, I reserve most of my irritation for myself.  This is another of those life skills that I will never perfect and will always be trying to get better at doing.  When I am in the shower at 4:00 am getting ready for my 5:00 am Uber, I remind myself:  You chose that 7:00 am flight.  When I choose to take back roads instead of the highway (or vice-versa) and end up stuck in traffic, I remind myself:  you chose that route.  When I was miserable in my last role at work, I kept reminding myself: you chose that job; now make the best of it.  In almost every instance of something irritating or trying, once I take ownership of the choice I made that got me into that situation, I find that the emotion lifts a little bit.  At first blush it may seem easier to play the victim.  It may seem like it will make you feel better and take less energy, but it doesn’t.  Accepting the consequences of your decisions and then asking, “What can I do about this?” gives you power.

“Options and ownership” has gotten me to the happiest stage of my life.  It’s how I’ve gotten out of unhealthy situations and into healthier ones.  It has given me peace of mind.  And it ensures that I see my Mom and sister regularly.

Retirement has been a really interesting time for me.  Throughout my schooling, my mind was absorbed with academics, learning how to be a human being/quasi-adult, trying to figure myself out, and trying to fit in.  For about the next 35 years (I count grad school more as “work” than “school”), my mind was absorbed with producing and advancing.  It was a soul-crushing mixture of “now-now-now” competing with “next-next-next”.  There were lots of interesting subjects that would flit across my brain, but I really had limited time to think Deep Thoughts.  I rarely allowed myself the luxury of that time, plus if I DID have time to think slowly and deeply about something other than a work challenge, I was usually too tired to put much into it.  I promised myself that when I retired, I would use at least a part of that time to allow myself to ponder random things.  This blog is partly a result of that.  In between reading too many e-newsletters, getting my Daily Challenges on too many games on my iPad, and the occasional Facebook doom scroll session, I noodle on things.  Today, you are going to be subjected to one of those things: my increasing agitation with the word Normal.

The word “normal” can have different meanings.  One is mathematical.  A mathematical normal is a line intersecting another line at a 90-degree angle.  I don’t have an issue with that.  (“Yay!” says Trish.  “Something she doesn’t have an issue with!”)  Where I get all twisted in knots is when “normal” is used as “conforming to a standard”.  And this is where the rabbit hole of my noodling comes into play.

Most of my life I have never, in many ways, felt “normal”—as in “conforming to a standard”.  I am left-handed in a right-handed world.  I am Jewish in a predominantly Christian country.  I am a woman who worked in a male-dominated field (especially during the early years of my career).  I am a chemist who worked for an engineering firm.  I am gay in a straight world.  I am a Southerner living in the Northeast (although that one really isn’t valid anymore!).  While we all SAY that there is nothing wrong with being different, there is clearly a judgment that comes with the word “normal”.  Unstated is that not conforming to the standard is a bad thing.  And many of us non-conformists take that a step further, deciding that we, ourselves, are bad.  Unfortunately, there has been a lot of discussion around what is “normal” and what is not “normal” in our world today.  It’s used in politics; it’s used in discussing so many of the “culture war” issues; it’s used to judge almost every aspect of people around us.  It’s not healthy. 

My thesis today is that the word “normal” should not be used as “conforming to a standard” because who gets to decide what the standard is? Plus, one standard cannot apply across a diverse population in most cases.  What most of us really mean when we say “normal”, however, is “typical.”  And this is where the Theory of Relativity comes in.  (I promised you rabbit holes!)

I am a big fan of Relativity.  Special Theory, General Theory, I don’t care.  Bring it on!  While I cannot even begin to understand the math, I really like the basic tenet that everything we observe is dependent upon the observer.  A good example is the Doppler effect.  We all know what that is, even if we don’t know what it’s called.  If you are standing near train tracks and a train is approaching blowing its whistle (probably to tell you to get further away from the tracks), you will first hear the whistle at a higher pitch.  As the train approaches, the pitch gets a bit lower and as the train passes you and rides off into the distance, the pitch gets lower and lower as it fades away.  However, if you happen to be riding on the train itself and hear the whistle blow, the pitch stays the same.  The whistle is the same for both observers.  The difference is the position of the observer.  (It has to do with compression of sound waves, but that’s not important here.)  What is “normal” or “typical”, then, really depends on the individual and their perspective.  There is no absolute “normal”.

Besides being a science geek with clearly way too much time on my hands, I have learned to become comfortable with what is normal or typical for me.  That doesn’t mean that there aren’t things I’m trying to improve upon (*cough* control issues *cough*).  It just means that I no longer feel the need to conform to a majority (or apparent majority) to which media and society encourage me to aspire.  That has been amazingly freeing!  Many times, particularly early in our relationship, Trish would look at me sideways and say, “You’re just not normal.”  I would get this in response to things like rearranging the dishwasher after she loaded it or singing along to TV commercials, or when she’d read one of these essays.  Now she pretty much keeps that comment to herself because 1) she has gotten used to my idiosyncrasies and sees these behaviors as “normal” and 2) she put a ring on it so she has no basis upon which to complain.

What has been more difficult (see: essay on Judgment) has been allowing other people to be their own typical selves.  As long as someone isn’t hurting themselves or others, they shouldn’t have to think or act like me, no matter how much I like how I think and act.  Just because it’s normal for me doesn’t mean it’s normal for someone else.  And I can have a REALLY hard time with that!

So, yes, my agitation with the word “normal” is directed outward towards our increasingly uncivil society, but it starts with being directed inward toward myself.  Dang it!  That always happens!  I always end up just looking in the mirror and needing to start there!  Darn these essays.  Feel free to do the same.  Try to redefine “normal” away from “conforming to a standard” and toward “typical”.  You do you.  I’ll do me.  And if we’re really lucky, we’ll all learn something from each other.