Everyone has their quirks.
We each have our habits, mannerisms, attitudes, convictions, rehearsed actions, hang-ups, beliefs, hopes, and dreams.
It takes time for you to get to know anyone else well enough that you begin to understand his or her specific weirdness.
Even when you know people very well, you can still discover additional weirdness lurking beneath the surface. A calm exterior can mask inner turmoil.
Many children don’t hesitate to bask in their own weirdness. As teenagers, we begin to care much more about what other people think. Conformity sets in, and we often pretend we’re not so weird.
As adults, we may have a public image that conforms to certain expectations. People who live in this neighborhood must have dogs, they must walk their dogs, and they must clean up after their dogs.
Conforming to some expectations makes social contact easier. It doesn’t mean that we’re actively hiding our weirdness from others. We’re playing the roles that build on our shared experiences.
We reassure others that we understand the norms. We’re polite enough or rude enough to fit in, to build trust, and to ease social anxieties enough to connect. And when we know people well enough, we can share our specific weirdness a little bit at a time.
Of course, with social media, some people put a LOT of their weirdness on display for the whole world to see. Is this who they really are? Or is it a show they perform while still holding some of their weirdness in reserve?
When we fall in love, we recognize how some of our weirdness fits nicely with the weirdness of another. We accept and even appreciate the weirdness that makes our love different from us.
Life would be boring if we were all the same!
And yet, we are all much more similar than we are different. We’re all weird in many different ways. But we’re all weird.
Weirdness comes with being human.
Leave a Reply