Normal?

What is normal?

This question has popped up a lot lately.

Is it pink hair, tattoos, body piercings, and dark clothes?

Is it oversized hoodies, baggy designer jeans, Timbs, and over-the-top bravado and swagger?

Is it the $900,000 condo in a metropolitan area?

Or a cookie cutter single family home in the suburbs?

Is it blue collar or white-collar work?

Or how about a get-rich-quick plan?

Is it traditional? Or is it conventional?

Is it revelatory? Or is it revolutionary?

Is it the big house with seven bedrooms, six full baths, a picket fence, Lexus GS, two kids, and an American Bulldog?

Or is it an unashamed, refusal of the American dream?

Is it conservative or liberal?

Is it republican or democrat?

Is it capitalist, socialist, or communist?

Or is it apolitical?

Is it mainstream or underground?

Is it male, female, or trans?

Is it straight, gay, bi-, multi-, or asexual?

Is it married, common law, or a civil union?

Is it Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or atheist?

And is race, class, or culture a factor?

Wait a minute …

Does normal even know what normal is anymore?

Let’s face it:

We’ve come a long way…. Or have we? (Okay; that’s another poem for another day!)

We’ve evolved into so many different things

With a variety of tastes, likes, dislikes, desires, wants, needs, and dreams.

But the more things change, the more things stay the same

If you look a little bit closer, we tend to be more alike than we are unalike.

So instead of forcing people into what we think is right,

Or how we think people should live

(Translation: what we’re comfortable with),

Just let people be.

And remember—just because it was right for you don’t mean that it’s right for everyone else.

© 2012 BuddahDesmond