Sans Fig Leaf
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"Finding Normal"
24 March, 2005
This is a tale of two Davids.
One David was my best friend in junior high. He was a bit clutzy and at least as big a nerd as myself, but seemed like an ordinary guy for the first several months I knew him. Then it came time for the annual eye tests at school, and he failed, rather miserably. Turns out at his previous school no one had stopped him from squinting to read the card. He was terribly nearsighted.
We were sitting at an assembly one day shortly after he got his glasses and he nudged me. "Hey, I can read the scoreboard! I mean, I can see it and everything. I didn't know you were supposed to be able to see it."
I couldn't resist asking, "All this time you've sat through games and never wondered why people would bother to have a scoreboard if no one could see it?"
He shrugged and said, "I just thought it was one of those things, you know?" He had just assumed that everyone saw the world the way he had before glasses.
The other David I didn't meet until late in college. He's highly intelligent and terribly well-informed on a wide range of topics. So I was surprised to watch him after he had some surgery on his nose and sinuses. "I never realized it was possible to sit and breathe through your nose. I mean, to actually get enough oxygen just breathing through the nose while you're listening to people or watching a game. I thought everyone did most of their breathing through their mouth."
It's amazing what we can adapt to--the strange and outlandish things we are willing to accept as "normal" simply because that's all we know, or we've lived with it so long.
People stay in abusive relationships because it's all they've ever known. And I'm not just talking about the physically abusive boyfriends or girlfriends. I can't count the number of people I know who have "friends" who are constantly putting them down, who trample all over their feelings, and who take advantage of them in various ways. "Oh, that's just his way," they'll say. That may be so, but it's the Way of the Jerk, and you don't have to put up with it.
People cling to social institutions that treat them (metaphorically) like an abusive partner. "I'm working for change from the inside," they'll say. Or, "They stand for many things I believe in, and they aren't as bad as you're making them out to be." When I hear that, it just makes me cringe. Almost every battered spouse that ever was believed that they could change their abuser if they just stuck it out and kept showering him/her with love. There is almost no convicted batterer on record who didn't have at least one character witness testify that they had a lot of admirable qualities and weren't as bad as people made them out to be. A few admirable qualities doesn't excuse the abuse. You can find another political party, church, civic organization, whatever, that doesn't use, abuse, and ridicule you.
People stay at horrible, mind-numbing, spirit-sapping jobs because that's all they've ever known. Some even insist that all jobs are mind-numbing and spirit-sapping, and if you have the temerity to disgree, you get labled as delusional. It's one thing to observe that all jobs have some unpleasant tasks and that every workplace has oxymoronic moments, but that doesn't make every job horrible. If your job really is horrible, look for a better one.
People put up with all sorts of physical maladies that could be alleviated, often with relatively simple things like wrist braces or drinking less caffeine or just learning how to cook balanced meals. If you're in pain, something is wrong. Check with more than one medical expert to see if there's anything you can do about it.
If a friend or loved one doesn't treat you with respect, find a better class of friend.
If you're unhappy with your life, change it.
If you're unhappy with your job, change it.
If you're in pain, try to find the cause and deal with it.
You can do it. All it takes is the knowledge that change is possible, enough self-respect to realize that you deserve better, the courage to take a chance, and the willingness to take another chance if the first (and second, and third, and...) doesn't pan out.
--Lady Bird Johnson