Normal Words
As I was driving into work today, listening to WHYY, my local NPR station, as I am wont to do, Maiken Scott’s program The Pulse came on, with an episode titled “ Challenging the Norm.” She spoke about how we establish “normal,” from the little normal like the way a particular office uses the coffee maker, to the bigger normals, such as the human practice of sleeping through the night. It is a fascinating episode with the potential for sparking thought as you look around and think about all of your own normals and how they became ingrained in your way of life. I wanted to listen to the whole program but had to get to my office and prepare for teaching.
This is not what I intend to write about, though, but rather about the memory that listening to this show sparked and the path my mind took to weave the two, memory and new experience, together. In this show, it was the word normal and how we create it that started my thought journey. I have written before about how people have different normals and that we can change what normal is, but I had not explored the creation of normal.
Often, when I am listening to someone explain their own thoughts or dig into a concept that interests them, their passion ignites my creativity to go running down its own path that veers just slightly off that I am listening to. This is one reason I carry paper and pen everywhere I go. If I don’t write down these tangential paths, they get lost and do not find their way back for me to expound on later. That is, they do not come back unless I am listening to someone who reignites them, as happened to me this morning.
Maiken’s episode on normality brought to mind a conversation I had with a friend of mine regarding language, how we talk and think about ourselves, and the evolution of language. You see, this friend of mine is transgender and transitioned as an adult. We are around the same age and grew up in a time period that, while acceptance for LGBTQ+ individuals was growing, it was more LG, not so much BTQ, never mind +, in part because the language simply did not exist. The words we used at the time simply did not encompass all that people were, at least not in positive, supportive way. Words may never have that all-encompassing capability.
People think in many forms: in images, sensations, words, even mathematical equations, but usually some combination of these. When we communicate these thoughts with each other, whether in visual or verbal form, we most frequently use words (and increasingly, emojis). Many people have difficulty translating their images, sensations, or equations into verbal expression that others will comprehend. Sometimes this occurs because language, as detailed and complex as it is, may not have the words to express certain concepts, and people then do their best with the words at their disposal. We communicate through image as well, though even this is not perfect, as our cultural conditioning will affect the ways we interpret pictures, just as it affects how we hear and read certain words. Consider that in some cultures a smile is not a warm, friendly greeting to a complete stranger (more on smiles here), but can be an indication that you are foolish.
All this difficulty with language and expression is also true when we try to explain something to ourselves, which is the point of the conversation between my friend and I. Having sufficient language available to describe what we feel about our own bodies, our minds, our desires and needs, is essential not only to communicate these aspects of ourselves to others, but to define our identities for our own self-awareness. So in the 1990s, when it was painfully common to hear the word gay tossed about as a pejorative, when there was no Internet as we know it today to find information about a culture that did not exist in your immediate sphere, many people like my friend felt something about themselves the they could not articulate, lacking the language to do so. It was not until society and language evolved together that more people were able to speak what their bodies had been telling them in a sensory language they could not fully translate into words.
What does this mean for normality? I would say it indicates that normality, if it ever truly exists, does so in a fleeting, diaphanous form, unique to each person that experiences it, using their own understanding of language to define it in their head. Language changes. Normal changes.
Fifteen years ago, I probably would have argued that they is most assuredly a plural pronoun and to use it in the singular is incorrect. Shortly after, I would engage in debate about whether the singular use was appropriate. Now I tell my students to use the singular they, no discussion necessary.
Twenty years ago, hearing the word non-binary, I probably would have thought it a term I should know for my next astronomy test. Now the main character of a novel I wrote is discovering their own place in gender identity for which they do not have the words, considering non-binary as a self descriptor.
Twenty-five years ago, I rebelled against the word ‘normal,’ determining that whatever normal actually was, I wanted nothing to do with it. I was not sure what qualified as normal, but whatever it was, I knew that I was not it and could no longer set normal as a goal. Now, I know that there is no normal, that societal standards are fickle, that difference is far more interesting than homogeneity.
Thirty years ago, other girls were bullying me, using the word gay to hurt me. A boy tried to comfort me, telling me it was okay, that people knew it wasn’t true, not understanding that it was not the language that hurt me, but the judgment, the hate that came with it. Now I am raising boys who see that those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community are people, without needing to hear it as a lesson.
Forty-ish years ago, I was in diapers. Language itself was new. Someday I will probably have to wear diapers again, but I’m hoping for at the bare minimum another forty (or better, fifty) years without.
Our own normals change dramatically as we grow, as we take in new elements of the world in which we live and the world itself evolves and shifts. It is only when we close ourselves to that evolution, to curiosity, to wonder, to exploration, to growth, that we cease to find a new normal, that our language stagnates, that we fall behind as the world moves forward without us.
I hope you experience a new normal, and that it is magical.
Originally published at http://www.sarahhyson.com.