The Strain of Being Normal

 

My friend Jose Maliekal sends me a couple of messages every morning. I guess that’s more a friendly gesture than a sacerdotal duty. Given my waywardness that age has not mellowed nor custom staled, the latter possibility is not tangential, particularly because Maliekal is a Catholic priest. Anyway, I find many of those messages quite stimulating.

One of the messages this morning was a quote from my beloved Albert Camus: "Nobody realises that some people expend tremendous energy to be normal." I save much energy by keeping away from human society generally. But as a young man, I did suffer much on this account.

The suffering owed itself to the simple truth that I was not aware of my own narcissism and affiliated vices (virtues, if you are the prime minister of your country or hold some such high position) in those days. Every society has an invisible script. It tells us how to behave, what to desire, when to speak, how much to feel, and when to flee. ‘Normal’ is the silent benchmark against which lives are measured. Those who fit into its mould move unnoticed. They conquer heights too. Those who fail to “fit” must struggle – not merely to succeed, but to appear ordinary.

The ordinary is tyrannical. More so than political tyrants.

Forced smiles. Polite words. Monitored tones. Compromised opinions. Suppressed truths. Mimicked attitudes. Edited personality.

How much energy do people expend on those ‘finesses’ demanded by the society’s mediocrity? Behind the publicly acceptable mask lies a private exhaustion.

I failed to learn those finesses and hence the society punished me. Every society is more eager to punish than reward. Rewards often threaten what is ‘normal’ and the society doesn’t want such threats. ‘Normal’ usually carries moral judgment. To be worthy of rewards can imply deviation from the ordinary.

Last week I visited an old friend who was with me for a brief period in Shillong in the fag end of 1980s. We were meeting after a long time. “Why did you leave your lecturer’s job in Shillong?” He asked. “My self.” That was my answer. I had failed to learn certain essential lessons of social living. I didn’t ‘fit’ in.

The pressure to ‘fit’ can become a quiet form of violence. Did Camus say that?

I learnt the essential lessons the hard way. Chronic anxiety. Emotional fatigue. Identity confusion. Insane depression.

I learnt the lessons eventually the hard way in Shillong. Delhi sharpened that learning in much easier ways. Delhi was a lot more kind to me, maybe because I had already become quasi-normal. I became a performer of sorts.

To perform normalcy is to live in exile, Camus would say. Not geographical exile, though in my case there was a geographical transition too. To perform normalcy is to live in existential exile. You are estranged from your own core.

I couldn’t sign my name properly for years after I left Shillong. And I lied to bankers that I was suffering from a physical illness that made my fingers shiver uncontrollably at times.

Now my fingers don’t shiver. I have learnt the essential lessons. I have learnt to pretend, in other words. I have become as ‘normal’ as I possibly could. But I don’t dare to step out into the society.

[I never considered school, where I worked most of my life, as society. Children are not ‘normal’. The society will make them soon.]