Normalability

Gotta say that over the last however many years and days I have been feeling like I must not be a normal person.  Society is set up a certain way and in a certain direction that I don't seem to be able to follow.  From the time we can remember we are inundated with images and conceptions of families and children, jobs and careers, houses and yards, things and things, night and day over and again, etc. This is what we see and this is what we are programmed to expect.

So why didn't it sink in to me?  Why don't I want these things?  Or more to the point, why is it that despite an interest in aspects of these things, they just are not my priorities...??  Somewhere deep inside all of this life of mine I took a wrong turn down the road that most people normally travel.  I want to change the world, I want us all to be able to live a different life, to make a difference.  So what?  There are a lot of people that say this and want this.  But the key to them is that they all just end up doing it within the system.  They look at it and say they will change it from within.  They end up, making a career out of it - academia, non-profit work, civil servant, etc - they settle into life and work, raise a family, buy a home...  What is wrong with that?  They are doing what they want to...

To them, yes.  To me, no.  I am not normal.  I don't see this as the path to change.  I don't see sitting for years and pluggin away in someone else's game for someone else's game as productive.  Forced to play by their rules, and within the confines of their parameters.  Even within this world we are told to think outside the box that contains our little board game.  We are however, not taught to think outside the room that we are sitting and playing the board game in.  Outside that room is a wide open world - blue skys, distant peaks, a night full of stars - there are no barriers outside of this room.  But outside of our proverbial box, we are still confined to our rooms.

If one truly wants to do things differently, they must do things differently.  They can't just grow up, go to school, go to the next school, and the next, and then just start working and making babies.  That is what the system wants us to do.  It wants us to tweak it, to alter it a bit.  A shade here, a dot there... but it does not want us to change its course.  We steer around the iceberg rather than turning away from the icy waters entirely!!  That is what life and education do, they put us into a life and a school building and teach us to play that board game.  The imaginative find ways to chat, flirt, tease, and tickle their compatriots sitting on the chairs outside the box and the table it rests upon.  But who is the one that skips school?  Who is the one that cuts class and ends up outside running barefoot through a field of dandelions, headed for that deep blue yonder, scaling mountains, gazing at the stars? 

These are not normal people.  They are bold people with something different inside.  They stood face to face with "normal", and "normal" blinked.  "Normal"  saw "abnormal" looking back at it as "normal".  In their own world, in their own heads, "normal" was whatever they saw inside as normal.  Normal came in a different shade of grey, but it was still grey, and it illuminated a different path before them.  A path with different scenery, different pitfalls, and different destinations.  Why can't we teach more people to find this path?  When will my normal and your normal be able to walk hand in hand?