I haven't published since June 15 which is unsurprising considering that the apartment building caught fire on June 27.
That's right my devoted reader(s), the apartment building in which I lived caught fire. Dashing through choking, blinding smoke while bear-hugging my infant son was not something I could have foreseen. Still, that was almost a month ago and, after living out of a hotel for a week and then moving all of our undamaged goods, well, I think life is settling out again; though we had a flash flood in the parking lot at our new apartment and our cars were both water damaged for awhile.
So really, there is no normal simply because there is no way to average out the collected experience of each human life. There is no normal, not because Angus said so (though he was right there, too) but because even though we hold so much in common we still experience life so differently, even from our neighbors and those closest to us.
In a little more than a month I begin graduate school at East Carolina. I'll be working on this.
Is that normal? It probably is for me.
I'm not saying anything new here and, to be sure, I don't think I've ever used this blog to break open new philosophical possibilities. Most of us can parrot (not to diminish our belief, though) that everyone is different. It's a sort of existential libertarianism that's incredibly common in our American life and, I would hope, to life worldwide.
For me the apartment fire was red letter. For State Farm it's just another claim to be dealt with quickly. For people living nearby it was rubberneck worthy. For my extended family is was likely even more frightening than it was for me and, for billions of others, it was a non-event.
What's universal (though not necessarily normal) is that everything and nothing can be both small and large. People can hold things in common and apart. Our lives intersect with other lives and with everything and yet we live apart. Most of this normalcy requires no work and exists simply by virtue of our being.
But that's normal, I suppose, and I'll slip back into that until something else dislodges me.
