The Winner Stands Alone

(thoughts provoked while reading 'The Winner Stands Alone' by Paulo Coelho where a character makes a list of the qualities necessary to be a normal person)

What does being normal mean? Of the sets of abnormal and normal people, which one is bigger? Are they even comparable?

Logically, the no. of abnormal people should be just a fraction of total population. And this is because abnormality is an exception in common sense. So here is a definition of normal people – whose acts can be predicted or explained on the basis of common sense. And who has common sense? – a reasonable and prudent person has common sense. Now, this reasonableness and prudency in thought process and behavior come from experiences of day-to-day life. These activities differ a lot across societies and so does the attributes of normal behavior. In colloquial language, the ‘aam junta – the Mango People’ are those people who are not at top, who need to be taken care of by the power invested, either by them or grabbed from them, in the others at top. But then, those who are at the top are they not normal? They must be the people who have ambitions and capabilities and have harnessed them well. And this is perfectly normal. So, maybe being normal has nothing to with the position in social hierarchy. Maybe psychologists can better define normal behavior, but then they will narrow it down to mental condition and there philosophers will clash with them. Psychologists will say that if you go on with life exactly doing what the median of the population does, you are perfectly normal. They will term you abnormal if your thoughts are different from the herd. They will treat exceptions as abnormal. On the contrary, philosophers will value those with exceptional thought process as the ones who are still normal. So the argument boils down to the factor that whether being normal means to stay in the herd or to rise above them. History has numerous examples of people with eccentricities who had built empires and had performed miracles. They were able to do so because their abnormality had set them apart from the others when they converted their weaknesses into strengths.

The main concern behind this random thinking of mine is our negligence towards people who are not like us. The attitude of terming them abnormal and making them outcast destroys the special gifts bestowed in them. Here is a call for a paradigm shift in our outlook towards all these people.