What Is Normal?

Are you excited to come back home and have things be “normal”again?

Don’t worry things will be “normal” when you get home.

You will be your “normal” self soon after you get home.

 

Questions I so often get when I talk to friends, family, even locals around the world.

 

What is normal?

 

Is it having a hot shower waiting for you after you get home from a long day of work?
Is it having the option to any type of food you want at anytime you want?
Is it being able to speak English and everyone understand you?

For most of you reading you will agree that this is normal, but for many around the world they see these as abnormal.

Their normal would look more like taking cold bucket showers and if you are lucky you boil the water to warm it up.
You eat what’s in season or what the local markets/farmers have. And once it is gone it’s gone.
And lots of places there are more than one language in a region. Sometimes up to 14 languages in one city.

This is their normal. This is how they have always lived their life day to day. And not only do they live it, they thrive in it just as we thrive in ours.

So which normal is right?

This is a question I have asked myself over the months I have spent on the field outside of my “normal” environment. Normal is relative to each person. To each region. To each culture. Just because one way works or is the common thing in one culture doesn’t mean it is or will be in another. And that’s okay. I think that’s the beauty of it if we fully embrace it. If we fully come into a new culture willing to live in their normalities. It widens one view. It creates gratitude for the things we have. It opened or eyes to a new way of seeing/doing things. It humbles you. And it helps you figure out what you want your normal to be.

So am I excited to come home and have things be “normal” again? Yes I am excited to go home. It is a place of comfort, but it’s not necessarily my “normal” anymore. My normal looks like living with 32 young adults in cultures are are trying to understand. Sleeping on the floors of airports. 75 hour bus rides and getting stuck in the desert. Singing impromptu song in front of 2,800 students. Crazy spontaneous adventures. Acting things out because I don’t know the local language and I just need to use the toilet. Calling the place I lay my head that night my home, wether that is a hostel bed, or my sleeping pad on the floor of a church. My normal has changed and that’s okay. It’s very different and even when I type it out it seems foreign, but this is my normal. The place I thrive. The place I long to be.