“Ordinarily people would consider me disturbed, a little different from the usual viewpoint of normal human life.... But how ordinary are people anyways? "
- Xerxes
In American Beauty when asked about his wife Kevin spacey replies he doesn't know or cares and goes on to say “Our marriage is for show, a commercial for how normal we are “ . And these commercials are everywhere, even though advertisements shout out from billboards, TV screens, magazines for stuff, Phones, Watches, Laptops, Clothes - ' Express your individuality, Unbelong, Stand out from the crowd' but still everybody wants to do just the opposite.
Everybody wants to be like everybody else. Everybody wants to show how normal they are, and just how perfect there life is. When seen from above everything looks placid, beautiful, like neatly packed gifts. But sometimes some things, a scandal, a revelation, a public fight, or sometimes a lot of alcohol blows off the lid and exposes the rot within. For me it is shocking, though my shock decreasing every time I see this. It’s like a kid who picks a nice looking rock, only to throw it away startled and disgusted when he sees the worms crawling beneath.
It happens to me when I see people who can't stop praising their spouses, always keep shouting how much they love each other only to find they can't stand each other. It happens when seemingly normal people commit suicide, and no one has a clue what was wrong. It happens when the people whom I look up to confess how much they hate being themselves. It happens when people who are examples of having fun, whom everybody is jealous of blurt out that this is all show and they are sorry for whatever they did or are doing. It happens when our Class bully, whom I saw my whole life dominating people around him saying while he was drunk that he feels a Inferiority complex because of his office colleagues. Or when I see beautiful girls for whom guys are dying even to get trampled by found crying when drunk that nobody cares for them, when they get treated by guys like cheap whores. Girls who come and go only in cars, sip outrageously expensive cocktails, dazzle 'Ordinary' people like me their lifestyles only to get beaten up by their Husbands/Boyfriends. Or like when I find a professor teaching in college who’s known to have murdered his wife, and tried to murder his daughter too, the little girl being the sole eye witness who still carries a mark on her neck because of the knife slash.
And whenever I see a part of it, my view of the world changes forever, for I can never unlearn whatever I have learned.
So why this? I think everyone knows that there are no Normal people, then why they consider anyone not within the permissible limits of their normalcy as Abnormal?
So then everyone who appears different is instantly brandished as perpetrators of something immoral or worse illegal. Of something for which they should be corrected for (Even Marilyn Manson agrees with me on this). I personally know an example where my neighbors said that they would complain the police that we move around in the night too much; they said they’ll say we are terrorists. Of course they knew we weren’t and the Police will know so too but I knew that wouldn’t stop the police from bothering us. And all that just because we were not Normal, not that we harmed, disturbed or spooked anyone, but we didn’t sleep at the time of Ordinary people.
Although this gives me an advantage, I’ll never be overtly jealous of the so called successful people. Because who knows what lies beneath. But then in this world where Role models are supposed to be very important, where MBA colleges make a very big deal about mentoring I think I’ll never have one. I think now I can never look up to anyone with total sincerity. Sometimes I wonder if ignorance is actually bliss. Because now I have no trust on anyone or anything, it’s like a disease or maybe I think it’s a curse.
No wonder kids are the happiest beings on the planet, because they have not seen the filth, they have this wonderful gift of Innocence, a gift which will be soon taken away from them. Now I know what Holden Caulfield would have felt when he wanted to remove the ‘Fuck you’ from his sister’s school in ‘Catcher in the rye‘(But unlike him I hope I won’t have to recount my story from a mental ward).
But maybe most people need this cover, this wrapping around them so as to not let the people see what’s wrapped up. It’s like an ice cream parlor where every flavor should be Vanilla; a strawberry needs to be condemned. And a Black Currant? ... Burn it at the stake. So whenever someone colors his hair green, someone wears torn jeans or whenever some girl gets her fifth piercing some kind of shit has to hit the fan.
But they don’t mind everybody sweeping their dirt under the carpet. When they project an image of cream and honey while it’s all shit underneath. They can’t make everybody wear rose colored glasses (not since the romantics are dead) so they have rose colored glass cases around their lives.
So is there a cure? For them perhaps no. But for me? As my answer I’ll quote Kevin spacey from American beauty again for this always gives me hope
“I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax and stop trying to hold on to it and then its flow through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry, you will someday”
Oh! All this melancholy makes me long for a drink, though I can’t have one, not right now, but that shouldn’t stop you from getting one. Cheers!!! (Just be careful to stay within sobriety so as to not to say something which will peel the wrapping around our world a little more)
