THE CULT OF THE EXCEPTIONAL

When did being normal become a shortcoming? We seem to be falling prey to a growing view that you're either exceptional or failing. Everyone needs to be innovative. Everyone needs to differentiate themselves. Reliability has become a liability. If you're not travelling the world, saving something, risking your life or reputation or career, making something new or breaking something old, you're not really living. You're not worthy of interest. At least that is a dominant story line. And in that story line, "normal" people aren't creative or passionate or emotional or talented. Only the exceptional are. I submit Mini's "Not Normal" marketing campaign as defense exhibit A. 

But the truth, of course, is quite the opposite. I'm all for compelling visions and exciting ideas. I'm all for challenging the status quo. And yes, we should embrace those things more than we often have. People of true adventure and invention have always taken us to better places. We need them - the precious few genuine ones. The "crazy ones." But we'd be equally lost without all the people who show up and do an honest day's work, take care of their kids and each other and their neighbours, and are happy with being "normal" even when they are increasingly and repeatedly told they shouldn't be. They know that reliable and normal are not synonyms for being devoid of curiosity or passion or art, because curiosity and passion and art aren't exceptional traits. They are human traits. We need reliable. Reliable keeps the world spinning. Normal makes exceptional possible - not the other way around - and sometimes they occur in the same person. Sometimes they are the same thing.

"Normal can never be amazing," Mini tells us. It's catchy. It's also a lie.