The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.
– Alfred Adler
When we see others, it’s easy to imagine they are normal, and it’s natural to sometimes feel we are the one who is not so normal.
Why is it this way? One answer is that we don’t know everything about others. What we see and know is the image they present to the world, and most people try to present themselves as happy and normal. At the same time, we have inside knowledge about our own life, including all the hiccups, sidetracks, and everything that doesn’t fit our image of normality.
So we have an outside view of others, and they tend to present themselves a certain way. We have an inside view of ourselves and our own life. We probably have a false idea of what’s normal. And we sometimes torture ourselves if we think we need or should be normal, whatever we think that is.