In the las 50 years society has changed more than ever before.

Civil rights become recognized and denied day by day, diversity is the new standard so the free exercise and development of our identities has been secured  in most countries of the world.

Rules and roles are no longer fixed or clear, they are now liquid. Identity, race and gender are more  complex, and there is simply no time to assimilate these changes. It is a time when being a regular guy is like being a rhino or a koala, since extinction waits for you around the corner.

Urban tribes like Hipsters for example, spend time and money trying to understand and make sense of old objects  and rituals, not only because they are exotic, but because they need to find purpose in their lives using objects that had meaning for their parents and grandparents.

Notions of community, family, gender, race or class have changed so much and rights and benefits have been granted to so many “minorities” that new social rules appear. But not only the new exists, we are all still here, assuming responsibilities, paying taxes, working hard and dealing with things we never planned for our lives or for our future. Still believing in promises made when we were teens and still believing in values nobody seems to care about today.

Most of us feel everyone gets privileges except regular “normal” people. But here is the most interesting fact. First, what is a benefit? and second, who is considered “normal”?  Who is eligible for privileges?.

Benefits can be exemptions to things we have to do, pay or assume or also free things that are normally burdens or costs. So you are either released from burdens or given compensations. But everybody gets both! probably not in the same proportion (and that is a different discussion) but for sure everyone gets something. If we understand normality as the aim for fitting in society and its demands, then nobody is normal. We all break some standard or law, by being too fat, too dumb, not pretty, not smart, not macho enough or not wealthy or simply because we disagree with this or that. At the end nobody really fits.

One thing we do really well, is trying to point how others fit less than we do, so we can look normal. This ignites the endless labyrinth of exclusion, disqualification and extremism we are living today.  We all know how that works: its benefits and its consequences. We all went to school.

So, where will the good guys go? What will happen to that girl next door? Where are the utopians and the idealists? We simply do not know. None of us is really one of them even if we think we are. Why if in our minds, we have done everything “right” and at the end of the day we get nothing? 

 The positive questions to ask might be : Am I really that normal? Are you? Who is? Is being normal event relevant? this is the day to take a break and just recognize how normal all others really are and how our own judgemental minds fools us everyday. Blaming others for our mistakes or failures won´t solve anything, ignoring how regular and human we all are may take us back to real solutions.Well, these is the problem of being “selfishly normal”

Once I heard the expression: Nothing is normal, nothing is real. In these times of discrimination, persecution and exclusion seems so real.