SOMETIMES “NORMAL” IS JUST WHAT ENOUGH PEOPLE HAVE GOTTEN USED TO.
Some things do not seem self-evident because they make particular sense, but because they have simply been around long enough. Because we have seen them often enough. Because other people do them too. And because at some point hardly anyone still asks why.
THAT’S JUST HOW IT IS.
A remarkably powerful sentence. Not because it explains very much, but because it often prevents any further explanation from being required at all.
Why do children sit still for so many hours? Why do people work the way they work? Why is some behaviour considered polite and other behaviour rude? Why is something completely normal in one country and suddenly strange twenty kilometres away? Why do we keep doing things even though hardly anyone would claim they work particularly well?
That’s just how it is.
It sounds surprisingly similar to an answer. But sometimes it is only a habit with a full stop at the end.
NORMALITY RARELY FEELS LIKE A DECISION.
That may be the interesting part. If enough people do something for long enough, the question of whether things could also be done differently eventually disappears. A possibility becomes a rule, a rule becomes an expectation, and an expectation eventually becomes something that feels almost natural.
Not necessarily because it is natural. But because we hardly know anything else.
A FEW KILOMETRES CAN BE ENOUGH.
What seems polite here can feel distant somewhere else. What is eaten without a second thought here may cause disbelief elsewhere. What one culture considers respectful may seem strange, cold or even offensive in another.
And that is the interesting part: people on both sides usually do not experience their own version as one cultural possibility among many, but as a pretty sensible way of doing things.
Of course that’s how you do it.
Until you arrive somewhere where people do it differently.
HABIT CAN FEEL SURPRISINGLY SIMILAR TO TRUTH.
Perhaps that is exactly where its strength lies. We do not have to decide every morning which side of the road to drive on. We do not have to renegotiate the social order every time we greet someone. Habits and shared rules are part of what makes everyday life manageable in the first place.
So the problem does not begin with people getting used to things. That would be rather impractical.
It becomes more difficult when “That’s how we do it.” quietly turns into “That’s the right way.”
And when “That’s how I know it.” perhaps even turns into “That’s how the world is.”
NOT EVERYTHING THAT IS NORMAL IS THEREFORE WRONG.
And not everything unusual is automatically better. That is not the point.
Perhaps it is simply about seeing normality again for what it sometimes is: a solution, a tradition, an agreement, a habit, or a story that enough people have been telling one another for long enough.
Some of it is pretty sensible. Some of it may once have been sensible. And some of it may have been waiting for a very long time for someone to ask again:
Why, actually?