October 29, 2019 – Click here to listen
I have not been fishing in several weeks, nor have I gone hunting since the season opened. I have been totally immersed in moving into yet another home. I was thinking of this the other day and counted up the moves I’ve made in the past three years and it is mind-boggling. I left Honey Lake Plantation and moved to Sarasota, then moved to the other side of the state to Port St. Lucie Florida and after a few months moved to another house in Port St. Lucie, and then moved back to Honey Lake, then to the Florida Keys for 3 months, and from there to Stuart Florida, and am just now completing moving to Jupiter Florida. A friend told me that he needed an ankle bracelet to keep up with where I am lately.
I told another buddy if I mentioned moving again that I would ask that he just shoot me. I detest moving, I’m too old to keep starting over, and I just want to settle down and live my life like any other normal person. I related this to a friend of mine the other day and he broke out laughing and told me that I was as far from being a normal person as one could get.
I asked, “What is normal?”
He laughed and said the opposite of you.
I looked normal up in one dictionary and it said, “conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.” That sounds terribly boring. The urban dictionary takes another shot at it: A person who has become, or has the natural disposition to be, adept at blending in with their surroundings by falling under social normality . . . No example can be given for a “Normal Person” because they lack the ability to be interesting and thus retain no place in the memory.
A further google search answered the question, “What is a normal person?” Normal is anyone who doesn’t see the world as it is. In other words, most people are normal.
After reading that definition I suppose when I get down to the truth of the matter I have no interest in being normal anymore and I would suppose many of you would probably agree that it doesn’t sound too appealing. And yet the majority of people seem to revile in the fact that they are normal.
I read this interesting commentary regarding this question by Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing:
“Don’t you get it? There is no other you. Out of the six and a half billion people on earth, not a single one of them has had the same experiences in life that you have had. None of them share the exact same passions and struggles. None of them have lived your life. None of them.
You are the product of you, and nothing else. Every decision you have ever made over your entire life has led you exactly to where you are right at this moment. Simplified… You are you because of you.
I am me because of me.
And everybody else is everybody else because of what they did to get there. Because of their own choices. Because of their own paths.
There is no “normal” because there isn’t a single common trait shared by “everyone”. There is nothing that everyone is doing or that everyone is.”
This writer omits God from the equation. God created us to be unlike any other human in the world. We have unique DNAs, fingerprints, personalities, and so on. God did not want us to be the same, or what most refer to as normal. We are unique. God influences my life every single day and it is because of Him and His Holy Word that I have achieved anything positive. The writer did hit on a valuable point though, we are a product of the decisions that we make. When we know what we ought to do, we have a choice to be obedient or disobedient. The product of those decisions is you and me, for better or worse.
With all this said, normal isn’t even a reality, so why long for being like someone else? Enjoy who you are today!
Psalm 139:14
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.