{"id":3213,"date":"2013-06-06T16:27:04","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T21:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/?p=3213"},"modified":"2013-06-06T16:27:04","modified_gmt":"2013-06-06T21:27:04","slug":"sometimes-i-pretend-to-be-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/?p=3213","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes I pretend to be normal…"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Sometimes I pretend to be normal. But it gets boring. So I go back to being me.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

I absolutely love these words. They make me smile every time that I read them. Why? These words are kind of a mantra for me\u2026although, I won’t pretend that I don’t get caught up in the struggle to be “normal” from time to time.<\/p>\n

I am not sure that any of us are normal. We are all unique beings\u2026there are different things that make us tick. What I find to be meaningful may not be meaningful to you and what is meaningful to you may not be meaningful to be. I think that is what makes life so interesting and so precious.<\/p>\n

\"Crazy\"<\/p>\n

For me, the world would be a fairly bland place if everything was “normal.”<\/p>\n

I do get the appeal of normal though\u2026there is a certain aspect of predictability to normal. A way of knowing who we are supposed to be, how we are supposed to act, and what will happen if we act a certain way.<\/p>\n

The funny thing is that life doesn’t work that way. Life throws us the occasional curve ball even when we do “normal.”<\/p>\n

Here is the other thing about “normal,” it can get us into trouble. It’s a place where anxiety breeds. We become anxious when we are unable to live up to the definition of “normal” that we have in our heads. We think that we are weird or out of place. We get to a place where we can no longer appreciate what makes us unique, our own person.<\/p>\n

I say this because it is a conversation that comes up routinely in the therapy room. The desire to be “normal.” To have things figured out. To be like everyone else.\u00a0 All with the belief that our problems will go away with normalcy.<\/p>\n

So\u2026<\/p>\n

“Sometimes I pretend to be normal. But it gets boring. So I go back to being me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Sometimes I pretend to be normal. But it gets boring. So I go back to being me.” I absolutely love these words. They make me smile every time that I read them. Why? These words are kind of a mantra for me\u2026although, I won’t pretend that I don’t get caught up in the struggle to be “normal” from time to Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":3214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[65,52,29,79],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-2","tag-connection","tag-human","tag-journey","tag-perspective"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Crazy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3215,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3213\/revisions\/3215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3213"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=3213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}