Grateful That I’m Not “Normal”

“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”

~ Maya Angelou

Good Morning My Confidants!

I hope this finds you happy and well. Sitting here drinking my coffee and loving it. Sitting here drinking my coffee and thinking that....

I am so thankful that I’m not normal!

“Normal” people don’t question. They never ask why. They don’t look for better ways to do things. I will just about guarantee you that a normal person didn’t figure out how to make fire or invent the wheel.

“Normal” people like things because that is what everyone else likes, instead of liking something whether it is popular or not.

“Normal” people are never trend setters. But they follow trend setters.

“Normal” people never question authority or the status quo.

“Normal” people do things because that was the way they were raised, they tell you that whenever the can, and they never question whether the way they were raised was a good way.

“Normal” people don’t believe you can or should question.

“Normal” people believe anything that is faxed to them, emailed to them, or they see on Facebook—including that Mars is going to get so close to Earth on such-and-such a day that it will look like the moon, and that day only comes up once every few thousand years. And then they believe it again two years later when they get the same email again. "Normal" people get mad when you point out that the picture they are showing you as proof is a picture of the moon, just colored red.

Normal people believed that Sean Penn, Chevy Chase, Matt Damon, and Arnold Schwarzenegger died, and, that Beyoncé, George Cloony died twice. Brad Pitt more than twice. They also believed Abe Vigoda died twice before he actually did.

“Normal” people believe Tupac and John F Kennedy Jr are alive. In fact, they don’t believe it, they KNOW it. Don’t argue with them.

“Normal” people don’t read books. Heck, they don’t read signs on doors.

“Normal” people have nothing to do but talk about sports. Not that there is anything wrong with sports! But it’s sad if that’s all they have to talk about. I am sure sports professionals talk about something else!

“Normal” people think that animals don’t love. In fact, I don’t think “normal” people really have a clue what unselfish love is.

“Normal” people don’t wonder about the nature of the Universe or ever question or wonder about their part in the Scheme of Things. They really don’t question at all.

“Normal” people look at me blankly or with a confused expression when I ask them what their dreams are—what they think they were set here on Earth to do.

“Normal” people think they have the ear of God, and that their religious beliefs are the only correct ones and that everyone else in the world is wrong.

“Normal” people think that they have the right do deny a woman control over her own body.

"Normal" people think that anyone who isn't heterosexual is wrong, and many of them believe those people are going to hell. “Normal” people think it’s perfectly all right to deny two people who are in love the basic right to get married. That it's okay to pass laws to take away their Constitutional rights.

It amazes me to think about all the years I wished—with one huge consuming desire—that I was "normal." The Bible (John 16:23 & 24) told me that “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” Well, I wanted to be heterosexual. I didn’t want to go to hell! I cried myself to sleep many a night begging God to make me heterosexual. For God to make me “normal.” But "he" didn’t. I was then told it was because we can ask for anything, but sometimes the answer is, “no.” Because “sometimes we don’t get what we want because what we may think is good for us really isn’t.”*

Well, thank God he said “no!”

Thank you, God, for not making me “normal”!

Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh of Egypt, was not normal.

Plato, Socrates, Galileo and Sappho were not normal. Hafez, Rumi…they weren’t normal. Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci weren’t normal. Neither were Degas, Monet, Manet, Picasso, or van Gogh. Shakespeare certainly wasn’t. Chopan wasn’t. Mozart and Beethoven weren’t,

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were far from normal.

Darwin wasn’t normal. Thomas Edison wasn’t. Marie Curie, Einstein, nor Faraday were at all normal.

Anne Frank, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Earhart, and even Joan of Arc could hardly be described as “normal!” Rosa Parks wasn’t.

Ernest Holmes, and Charles and Myrtle Filmore definitely weren’t normal.

James Broughton certainly wasn’t normal, and neither was Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin or Jean Cocteau. Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman weren’t normal.

John Lennon wasn’t normal either.

Stephen Hawking wasn’t normal, nor Eckhart Tolle or the Dali Lama.

Bono, Better Midler, Lady Gaga, Sting, Cyndi Lauper, P!nk, and David Geffen; none of them normal.

And deep down inside, whether they would admit it out loud or now, “normal” people think they’re better than everyone else.

So therefor, I repeat myself. Why would I want to be normal?

Why did I want to fit in?

Then it occurred to me.

I do fit in!

I fit into a world of amazing and wonderful and artistic people. And while I am not famous (yet), I have still touched lives with my art.

I fit in just fine.

And I am so grateful that I’m not normal!

Namasté,

B.G. Thomas

January 31, 2024, Entry #30

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* It’s Not That God Didn’t Answer Your Prayers, It’s That You Didn’t Get The Response You Wanted:  https://medium.com/publishous/its-not-that-god-didn-t-answer-your-prayers-it-s-that-you-didn-t-get-the-response-you-wanted-1b0bf4be9c24