Over my almost forty years of living on this earth I have heard so many people wish they could be normal.
"How does everybody else live right and keep it all together?"
"Why can't I be as organized as everyone else?"
"How does everyone else do so much more than I do?"
"I'll never be successful, skinny, rich, or loved like everyone else."

From the time we were little children and have been able to understand spoken language, everyone has been telling us what is normal and what is expected of us. The problem with this is we are told what is normal by people who aren't normal.

Everyone telling you what normal is tells themselves that they are the exception, but everybody else is normal. People think that either they are failures at being normal, or they just have to try harder. All the while, everybody keeps repeating the lies of normality. It seems that so few of us ever admit to anyone else that normal doesn't exist.

Don't misunderstand me. I understand the value of socialization, of teaching cultural norms and mores. We all need to at least have a concept of what society thinks is normal. I just think we should see them as what they really are: cultural ideals.

Normal is not the same as truth. They may cross paths from time to time at the Starbucks, or wave to each other at the Wal-mart, but they aren't neighbors, and they don't carpool. Normal wants to be everybody's best friend, normal is on the pep squad and plans the prom. Truth walks through the world making friends with the unpopular people, feeds stray dogs, and writes letters to the editor. Truth reads unpopular books, and asks unpopular questions. Truth doesn't give a rat's ass about being popular-it just wants to be understood, whether you like it or not. Normal changes minute by minute. Every PTA meeting, every pop star, every popular song, every new interpretation of morality, there are so many things that change what normal is. Normal exists as a continually changing vapor, even though it thinks itself a mountain of granite.

What does this have to do with call centers. Nothing and everything. What is important about the conspiracy of normality is that we don't take it so seriously. Do whatever is necessary for people to take you seriously, but don't become heart broken because you don't seem to have the ability to be normal. Don't buy into the lie that everyone around you is normal, and you are the freak or failure. That's the conspiracy of normality. What's important is that we live our lives seeking truth and not just trying to be normal.

Since I've worked in the call center, I've had days I suffered because I asked why I wasn't normal. Why don't I have the same call volume? Why don't I get the same numbers? When Larry ran the center, we all tried to be normal. Now, with the new management, they have begun to treat us more like individuals, and not just numbers on an ACD report.

Truth lives. Normal is overrated...
Thanks for reading,

AC