Normal

Normal

What is the norm anymore anyway? The census tries to answer that question every 4 years but it’s not really answering it in any meaningful way. It may tell us what average is but what’s the point of knowing averages? So, we can know how far from Jo average we are?

Unless you are a billionaire, an Olympian or have a record-breaking penis, comparing yourself to Jo Average doesn’t usually end with feeling better about yourself. But social norms are sneaky, we believe the ones we are brought up with, and believe them from an unconscious place that rarely gets questioned. Do we believe them from a place of intelligent examination of the alternatives resulting in a well thought out conclusion? Of course not. Do we enjoy following them and attempting to meet the social demands of adhering to them? I know I don’t. Or do we just do it because we feel we have to? Everybody in the house let me hear you say ‘Hell Yeah’. Feeling philosophical but not entirely imaginative because it has been a long day, Ben and I retreat to the verandah with some wine and cigarettes to ponder life’s big questions. I know that not all philosophers work inebriated with a constant cloud of smoke surrounding them but this is a musing about norms and stereotypes. A wild haired eccentric with a wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other is a far more evocative description of a philosopher and aspirational goal than ‘non-descript university professor whose name you have forgotten 30 second later who jogs and eats vegetables’. I prefer the drama, romanticism and pathos of drunken philosophising to the unremarkable reality of life as a philosopher in the 21st century, so choose to go old school when asking the big questions.

Ben and I are both in our 30s, with no visible future prospects for a partner and the whole white picket fence life. We are both stuck on page 1 of the check list of life while our peers seem to be on page 10. Partner? Nope. Well-paying job? Nope. Jobs we are happy in? Nope. No major debts other than a mortgage? Not a chance. A plan for the future? Sort of. I’m pretty pleased with myself that I remembered to open all of the wine bottles in the beginning so there will be no tears later in the evening when I am drunk and unable to work the bottle opener. So now that the background is out of the way and you can see that I am in fact a bit of a forward planner we shall move onto the bits I remember about the philosophy I developed one lazy balmy evening in vino veritas.

Life is a series of stages and as we grow old and progress through the stages, we are always young. Each stage you pass through is one of many, many being 3 in my theory. For anyone who wants to argue with me, 3 can be many. 3 in your marital bed, is that too many? 3 strangers watching you poop, is that too many? For the more sexually adventurous or exhibitionistic who answer no to the above, 3 Ks missing from your bank balance, is that too many? So now we have addressed the concerns of the inevitable annoying nit-pickers we are ready to move on.

Stage 1: From birth to 30. Building the foundations.

The years you are expected to enjoy yourself, setup future plans, live with no real worries, travel slightly frivolously while figuring out who you are and what you want to do with your life. The latter years of this stage are when people start to ask about your plans for the future with increasing intensity and begin to expect increasingly detailed answers about stuff like 5-year plans etc. The closer you get to 30 the more serious people become in their questioning and the more alarmed they become about your lack of plans. The plan needs to be a husband/wife, kids, stable job and the plan needs to be a manicured PowerPoint presentation that could be quickly adapted into a pithy TED talk that would go viral under the hashtag life goals, motivation, GYST or some other tag usually found on an Instagram plug for weight loss teas that make you shit out half your bodyweight, (shout out to Taylor here, you know who you are). If your plan is not the sort of thing you would find hijacked by an influencer to sell teeth whitening strips, people will worry about your future and lecture you about immaturity or something, I phase out when they start so it might be some other word beginning with I, but suffice to say its judgy and boring.

Stage 2: 30-60 years, Building on the foundations.

Sometimes people get to this stage and a beautiful building emerges, sometimes this is when they discover the foundation is shit and the builder has ripped them off and the building will be condemned.

Stage 2 is where you are blossoming, extending your family, business or work. It’s about savings, so much about savings, saving for your children, saving for your retirement, it’s all about squirrelling away the moolah. Never mind the fact the retirement age is constantly being raised, inflation is through the roof, market crashes are coming and our corrupt government that's only interest is in serving itself rather than its people. I’m nothing if not an optimist obviously. This is where we see a lot of marriages fall apart, and people questioning their lives and how the hell it turned out the way it has.

Stage 3: 60+ This is the retirement phase, where all things going to plan you get to pull back from the rat race and enjoy the fruits of your labour. Hopefully you are happy and healthy, and wealthy and wise and now able to enjoy the time you have left surrounded by the people you love.

Few people successfully progress through these stages, happy, healthy, with beautiful families, to tick off the goals they had set for themselves in their youth. Life is a combination of Luck, Chance, Planning, Enthusiasm and Hard Work. Hard work is not enough without luck, and luck is not enough without hard work.

Some of us are wanderers at heart. Plans and progressing through a check list feel stifling, roots feel confining, predictability feels boring, expectations feel suffocating.

Conservatives and traditionalists feel incredibly threatened by people who don’t want the things that they want. They shun free spirits, label them as directionless and depressed. To the herd not wanting what they want is the very definition of mental illness.

Why as humans are, we so quick to shut down new ideas and different ways of doing things? Despite the divorce statistics people continue to get married. They continue to chase a promise that has proven unsustainable time and time again. An outdated norm that no-longer offers the social, financial and protective benefits it did in the past. I have faith in the new generation, but I also despair them as well. But ever the optimist, I still hope. I hope that one day the only question that will be asked when you meet someone is: are you happy? And the response will always be, yes.

I’m a man of contradictions. I perhaps/definitely drink too much. I perhaps/definitely smoke too much, which given I’m an asthmatic with sleep apnoea and enlarged tonsils (Can you picture me wheezing and snoring? God even my medical conditions are super glamorous) is probably pushing my luck a bit too far. But, on the flip side no-one can match me for my extreme detoxes. There is no amount of partying that I can’t do penance for with a week of juice fasting. Literally shitting the toxic parts of life away. More upsetting, take a seat before you continue, I’ll wait. Sometimes in my darkest moments I even exercise. Luckily, I soon regain my senses but we all take the wrong path sometimes and find ourselves sweating and grunting in a terribly unattractive way in ridiculous pursuit of the body beautiful. It is the burden I must bear for my bacchanalian soul, party hard and repent with ugly indignity. To paraphrase Cyndie Lauper ‘Guys just wanna have fun’. And Britney: ‘You gotta work bitch’. Words to live by.

I have made plenty of big mistakes, and there have been enough emotional highs and lows to exhaust a councillor with weak emotional boundaries, but I don’t have any real regrets. I am what I am because of what I have done, felt and experienced. I have sincerely enjoyed many of those moments, and have some dramatic stories to tell about the less enjoyable parts. My non-plan for the future is to continue being a needle monkey. I enjoy the job despite its crappy pay, it’s nice knowing you are playing a part in people’s health. I want to continue living with people so hopefully I never become one of those weird anti-social shut-in types who thinks it’s normal and OK to end up on an episode of hoarders. I want to create a home in my rental property that is my sanctuary and safe place, and for it to be a sanctuary for my friends and family too. It will double as a den of iniquity and vice should the occasion call for it, Christian upbringing rears its head again. I want to travel and explore the world. I want to stay close to my friends and make new friends wherever I go. I want to break free, have you seen that Queen video? I want that. You only have one life to live and I want to enjoy mine and live it in a way that makes me happy. I want to go out with a bang, and have plenty of them along the way too, no desolate nursing homes for me.

Responsibility isn't wrong, it’s just not the right choice for me. You don’t need to personally experience something to feel empathy and understanding. I understand that my choices are not for everyone, and other people’s choices are not wrong simply because they are not the choices I would make. You don’t need to lose a child to know it would rip your soul apart, you don’t need to win an Oscar to know it would feel great. You don’t have to literally walk a mile in another person’s shoes, metaphorically putting yourself in their shoes and acting with kindness is enough. Society is built on norms, nothing wrong with that. There is also nothing wrong with finding your own path. For those who don’t fit into the boxes and feel scattered and lost, its ok to make your own way. You just might find that the you that has been hidden is a fabulous witty gay man who will one day win a Nobel prize for literature for his glorious story that examines the problems of our times in a hilarious and relatable way.