Maybe you know people like this. Maybe you live with people like this. Maybe you are people like this. You know the kind of people I'm talking about. The ones who do things that, you're certain, 90% or more of the population would recognize as uncool, unacceptable, or otherwise unthinkable.
We often see quirky and diverse individuals, glowing radiantly in all of their perceived social faux pas, sometimes clad in army fatigues, or trenchcoats, or black mesh, the woman with shaved heads and the men with braided hair hanging past their shoulder blades. They wander like migrating elk around the malls and sidewalks as if they were trying to fool us into thinking they are what we refer to as normal. But they're not fooling anyone. We know what they are. Don't we?
That's right.
They're weird.
But guess what?
Ain't no such thang (Note: I just snapped my fingers when I wrote that. I don't know why; I just did).
Sure, they may not blend in like the rest of us homogenized humans. But who doesn't?
I'll tell you who doesn't. I'll tell you who the weird ones are.
People who kill, steal, rape, and vandalize: they're the weird ones. People who buy National Geographic magazines because they feel strangely titillated when they look at the high resolution photographs of naked native women with sagging mammary organs: they're the weird ones. People in college who still talk about high school days like they actually matter: they're the weird ones. People who liked the Seinfeld series finale: they're the weird ones. People who cheer for the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Lakers and the Oakland Raiders: they're the weird ones. People who wear meat dresses to award ceremonies: they're the weird ones. People who refer to themselves in the third person: they're the weird ones ("Hey, Jerry needs a banana split, and Jerry wants two cherries on top. If Jerry doesn't get two cherries, Jerry is going to be very, very, VERY, angry. Believe me, you won't like Jerry when he's angry. So, don't be a fairy, Harry, and give Jerry two cherries").
But what about the one guy I saw the other day who looked like he wanted to be an army-strong, free-loving hippie? Believe it or not, he's not a weirdo; he's just confused.
And the guy who plays Scrabble by himself? Not weird; just really intelligent.
The lady who scours the parking lot for pennies? Not weird, either; she's thrifty.
Personally, I think we are often too quick to label others as weird, odd, peculiar, or abnormal. Just because you come home one day to find your roommate sitting on the couch in a dress ["It's a kilt, sicko!" (from film How the Grinch Stole Christmas)], does not make him weird. He may be the only man you know who does it, but that does not justify categorizing him as a weirdo. No single individual (I'm making a general statement right now, which will most definitely not apply to every situation) is capable of categorizing his fellow human beings as weirdos, except in the cases which I have outlined above, of course. Otherwise, just realize that they're different than you are in some ways, just as you are different from them. In that, they are the same as you, and you are the same as them. Ultimately, we are all normal because we are all abnormal, and vice-versa, and "I am he as you are he and we are all together" (Beatles's song "I Am a Walrus"). "Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih" (from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land").
[Note: Datta signifies "give", dayadvham "sympathize", and damyata "control"; shantih, repeated three times at the end of Eliot's poem, serves, in my opinion, to emphasize the meaning "The Peace which passes understanding"; these are words taken from the ancient Indian Upanishads]
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