Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Normal's Just A Setting On The Dryer
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2014 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
(Title from some lost-to-the-ages sage, I think.)
I recently said to a friend that I'm pretty on-board with "Labels are for mailing things" and "Normal's just a setting on the dryer" (also said as "Normal: of or pertaining to someone named Norm"). I also shy away from calling things "real", from using the minimizing adverb "just", from saying that "everyone" does or is or doesn't or isn't something.
Today I was thinking about the assumptions that US children of immigrants make, about the fact that we know that "normal" is relative. When I'm in Mysore, it's as normal to sidestep cow poop on the road as it is to avoid clicking on phishing links in my email.
Evidence is mounting that several people consider me a role model and a leader. (And yes if you thought "that must be something Sumana is resistant to acknowledging, to herself or publicly" then you are accurate in your predictions!) So I'm mulling that. Role models demonstrate that something is possible, for, lo, here is an existence proof. And leaders get to influence perceptions of what's normal, and what's bullshit.
