My fellowship also provides me a place to try out new behaviors, actions, and thoughts. By attending meetings, I can share my thoughts and get feedback. If I can maintain an open mind and learn to take criticism constructively, I can learn about who I am with help from my peers, and I can do so in a safe environment. I talk with my sponsor and others in the program, and I am able to push myself to new limits. I learn to trust people and to trust my own thinking.
When I have opportunities for learning and growth, which some people choose to call problems, I think them over and try to solve them with advice from my sponsor. I make a habit of calling him on a daily basis. I mention anything I may have learned along the path of recovery. These conversations allow me to learn about my thought processes. If my solutions coincide with my sponsor’s way of thinking, I can then begin to trust my decision-making. Prior to entering recovery, I trusted my own faulty thought processes. As others in the program have said, my best thinking usually got me into trouble, and my recovery depends on my ability to share my thoughts and concerns with my sponsor and to seek his advice.
Dictionary definitions of “normal” include words like “usual,” “standard,” “customary,” “common,” “average,” and “typical.” Philosophers and social scientists have spent countless hours and millions in grant money trying to define “normal.” Maybe it’s easier to define normal by thinking about what it is not, rather than what it is!
We do know that what’s normal for one person may not be normal for another. Perception plays an important role in what seems normal. Each of us perceives normal differently. Perceptions come to us through our senses, but our understanding and expectations influence our perceptions. Since everyone’s ability to perceive and understand how the world works is unique, everyone has different expectations, so naturally, everyone has the potential to see normal in a completely different light. It is no wonder that the world is full of people who seem so dissimilar.
Some people believe that chocolate ice cream is a delicious treat, while others think it is nothing special. (And some people have sensitive teeth, which makes eating ice cream very painful, if not impossible.) Some folks can smell a rose from twenty feet in a heavy wind, while others must practically stick their nose right in among the flower’s petals to catch the scent. In either case the person doing the smelling may like or dislike the scent. Yet, in both of these cases, there is a norm. Chocolate ice cream has a taste that is normal for it, and a rose has a smell that is normal for it. If I placed a spoonful of chocolate ice cream in my mouth and tasted pastrami, or sniffed at a rose and smelled window cleaner, I would be concerned that the world had gone terribly wrong. What is normal is what we have learned to expect.
Back to those dictionary definitions. According to them, normal can mean “conforming to a standard,” “adhering to a pattern,” or “the usual or expected.” Debating these definitions would be fruitless; I’ll select the ones I found most useful in formulating my own definition and present them here.
In order to conform to a standard, the standard must be set and identifiable. The same is true for adhering to a pattern. Therefore, it should be safe to say that the usual becomes the expected, which becomes the standard or pattern. What usually happens is what I expect to happen. After a while, it simply becomes a pattern; I do this, and that happens. To me a standard is something I can rely on, something tested time and again that has always produced the same result. In the beginning, my using performed in this way. It was reliable in that it always made me feel better—except on those mornings after I drank too much. After a while, drugs and alcohol lost their reliability and the results of using became abnormal. Unfortunately, by the time this happened, I could not stop using. The abnormal had become normal in a weird, twisted sort of way.
When I began working, I learned what a normal day at work was like. While my normal day was much different from that of most people—most people do not build cars for a living—it was normal to me. If one day I woke up and drove to work, only to find that I was expected to do accounting, I’d consider that a departure from the norm. Things never got quite that weird at work, but I did have some very abnormal days during my time as an autoworker. For instance, I can remember times I went to work, expecting to report to my regular job, only to discover that I had been temporarily reassigned to another job on the assembly line. It was the same type of work; I was still building cars, but I was in a different department, in a different part of the building, working with different people, handling different parts, and so on. Sometimes I liked the change of assignment and sometimes I hated it. How I felt was determined by my expectations of what I thought was my normal job. Man is a creature of habit, and we tend to develop a comfort zone. We seek stability and don’t like surprises. We do not expect the unexpected. We expect the normal, or what has become normal to us.
Normal is not always easy to pinpoint or describe. It varies from person to person, day to day, season to season, year to year, and understanding to understanding. Other potential variables include my patience, tolerance, and willingness to change. They all play a part in my understanding, as does my ability to be honest with myself, and to keep an open mind. Since normal is so hard to put a finger on and to hold in place, let us first look at some realistic ranges of normalcy. I live in lower Michigan. The common saying about the local weather is, “If you don’t like it, wait fifteen minutes; it will change.” Of course, that isn’t literally true, but the weather can be rather fickle no matter where you live. Winter weather conditions in Michigan vary widely, depending on the area of the state. The snowfall can run from a few inches to a couple of feet each year in the south, to several feet in the north; along Lake Michigan or in the Upper Peninsula, grab your shovel—it’s going to get deep. There is a wide range of temperatures as well. Still, each area of the state has a temperature range and an amount of snowfall that is considered normal.
Where I live, in the south central part of the state, winter usually begins sometime between late October and Thanksgiving. It does not let up until the middle of April, or sometimes as late as early May. It is normal during these times of the year to expect cold weather. Snow and cold are expected, and clouds seem to obscure the sun for the greater part of the winter season. January is usually very cold, and the temperatures can dip as low as zero-to-ten degrees Fahrenheit rather quickly.
The mercury can dip much lower, but that is not considered normal. Yet, if I venture outside in January and find the temperature is in the thirties, I think it is pretty much normal. After all, winter in Michigan is very cold. A particular winter day may not be as cold as I expect it to be in January, but it fits into my expectations of winter because I have a wide range of expectations for outdoor temperature built into my expectation of normal. When I am indoors, my expectations for the weather change dramatically. Expectations apply to all areas of my life.
For example, I have very strict expectations when I get into my car. I always expect it to start when I turn the key. If it does not start, look out; I may lose my grip on reality in a hurry. I also expect that when I put the gearshift into drive and step on the accelerator, the car will move forward. Then, I fully expect the brake pedal to bring me to a complete stop. In fact, I have come to expect these functions as being so normal that I am willing to bet my life on them—especially when it comes to the functioning of the brakes. If the car does not start or the accelerator does not move the car, I’m not leaving my driveway. However, if the brakes do not work after the accelerator has done its job, I am in big trouble. My expectation that the brakes will work is reasonable. I have developed this expectation over time. From the time I was young, I have ridden in cars, and the brakes have never failed, at least not yet. There have been some anxious stops due to snowy conditions, but those instances are exceptions, and they are not the fault of the brakes. They are the fault of the driver—and I always tend to give the driver a bit more leeway than I am willing to give the car, especially when the driver is me.
You can see that I have a wide range of expected normal with respect to the weather. However, regarding my car, that range quickly narrows. The same is true when it comes to my behavior. My range of acceptable normal behavior is much wider for myself than for others. For instance, when I am