On being "normal"

I'm on vacation.  The Israelis and the Palestinians are still on their own, helping to screw up the whole world, and I am doing nothing to stop them because it's summer.

The weather has been beautiful.  We go down to the water.  The tide comes in.  Children run and splash and throw balls.  Balls never go our of style.

Friends come to visit.  Anyone who has a house within a mile of a large, scenic body of water knows how many friends they have.  We talk.  We talk about our other friends, about families, and now that we are older about the extended family.  The families that our kids have married into and the people who are now attached to us.  We talk about grandchildren, who are all charming, creative and soooo intelligent that it's sooo impressive.

As we talk to friends, and learn about all the people we know, as we observe the relationships of the people we know and love, and of those who we just know, or just know about, somethings become more clear:

My life is really good -- but still it is disappointing. Perhaps I could be doing more.  More what?

Talking about everyone else is fascinating, and it shows how difficult life is; no one comes out unscathed.

Everybody is weird, once you really get to know them.  The attempts to figure out how to solve the riddles of life take all forms. The solutions to each of life's problems vary very widely, but they all end up being incomplete.

The range of what is "normal" is so very wide.  Anyone who is not paralyzed by doubt and fear, and feels optimistic about tomorrow is weird, but is normal.  Anyone who is full of doom and gloom and is convinced that all good thing will come to an end, is considered realistic, but also is "normal."     Anyone  who has learned how to support themselves and to remain in a mutually beneficial relationship is considered normal, no matter what kinds of contortions they have to go through to make those two things happen.  In many case, just being able to maintain one of those, either being self-supporting, or maintaining a good relationship is considered to be doing well enough to be considered "normal.

Beyond that, everyone does it differently; inefficiently really, and everyone is fucked-up.

I can't think of one person who really coasts through it all, all the time.

I can't think of one person I'd rather be than me, and I have some strange, weird and bad moments, just from what goes on inside of my head.

That's normal.

That's too bad.  It should be better than this.