Normal is a myth

Don't be fooled

I’m writing this from a community space, right outside a hip (yes, I used the word hip) coffee shop.

Around me, people are doing their “normal” things, but in their own way, they’re extraordinary.

There are little kids literally running around my table, playing tag, laughing, and having a ball. To their parents, this is probably just life. Normal. Loud. A little chaotic.

To me, someone who no longer has small kids at home, it feels magical. I’d give a lot to have just one more ordinary afternoon like that, complete with one of those end-of-day hugs, because those are the best.

I watched an interview recently where a comedian was asked, “Who are you jealous of?”

Without missing a beat, he said, “Anyone with small children at home.”

That hit me hard.

When you’re in it, those days can feel repetitive. Exhausting. Even boring. But from a distance, you can finally see what they were: fleeting, rare, and full of life. Normal only in the moment. Extraordinary in hindsight.

We do this with almost everything.

Our showers are normal, right? But they aren’t. As Jimmy Carr points out, hot showers didn’t become the norm until relatively recently. In the grand scale of human history, standing in a hot shower is something only an infinitesimally small percentage of people have ever experienced.

John D. Rockefeller didn’t enjoy an instantly hot shower like you and I do. Our daily hygiene routine would have seemed wildly extravagant to him, someone who was, many times over, the richest man in the world.

Our communication feels normal too. But 100 years ago, instant communication across the street was impossible, much less across the planet. It’s normal to us, but really, it’s extraordinary.

Your daily coffee, phone call, email, shower, indoor toilet, access to instant information, entertainment, memory-foam mattress, none of this is normal when viewed through the lens of history. We live in a time of unprecedented abundance and comfort, and somehow we forget how extraordinary it all is.

If you’re reading these words, you already have more access, more comfort, and more opportunity than the vast majority of humans who have ever lived. More than kings. More than emperors. More than the wealthiest people of their time.

That’s not normal.

It’s extraordinary.