Being Normal?

I am in the middle of a book entitled: “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable”, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This is a fascinating book that you should be able to find in the business section of your local bookstore. Although it is a finance and investment book, to me, it has more to do with how our mind tries to find pattern and “normalcy” in a world that is all but not. The author tries to help the reader come to grips with this realization.

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine does an excellent job in summarizing the book:

“Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don't--and, most importantly, can't--know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong….

The problem… is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable….

Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, 'History does not crawl, it jumps.'"

Think about this for a moment. Although we see advertisements like, “Why be normal?”, or even some of the sports commercials about being an individual (not with the crowd), subconsciously our society continually tells us to fit into the “Bell Curve” (i.e. strive for normalcy). Even us parents want our kids to “stand out”, but not too much, or their personalities or achievements will bring undue attention on them. Think of children who are extremely gifted with intelligence, art, music, or athletic ability. Whether you agree with me or not, our western culture encourages normalcy. The reason? We can predict normalcy. We can draw predictions from it.

The problem with this concept (if it is true :)) is that it isn’t life. We don’t remember or even perseverate on the normal aspects of our life. We focus, and go back to those moments that are etched, or even gashed into our brains. They are moments in our past that we go back to for reflection, to help us define who we are in the present, moments we cannot get out of our head because they are so painful, and moments that seem so “unlikely” that we try in every way we know how to explain them, but to this day still cannot resolve.

Maybe a personal example can help. Last week, our family spent a few days in Orlando, celebrating my little girls 5th birthday. On one particular day, she dressed as a princess, with tiara and wand, and got to eat with other princesses from Disney World for lunch. It had to be one of the most girly things you can imagine. She absolutely loved it. My son loathed it. He was a good sport and participated, but he was definitely counting down the minutes when we could hit the roller coasters. My little girl soaked it all in, being the little princess that she was.

However, if you had seen her a couple of days before, you would have seen her in the same dress, tiara, and wand riding the GM Test Track at Epcot, laughing and screaming as loud as she could! People in line with us were amazed that such “a princess” would want (beg is the better word) to get on a ride that reached speeds of 70 mph! There was one point where we come off of the “Snow White Ride” (a very slow, tame ride) and she looks at me and says, “daddy, can we go to Thunder Mountain now?”(Thunder Mountain is the fastest roller coaster at Walt Disney World that she was allowed to ride due to height restrictions.) How can I say no to request like that?

The problem with these people that were confused is that they have an idea of what a princess should look like. They have hard time accepting that a cute little girl in a princess dress would actually love riding roller coasters! In other words, my little girl is a “Black Swan” in their version of reality. They would have no problem seeing her with her grandma, playing with her dolls, and waiting on her brother and daddy to get off of the roller coaster ride. That makes sense. To them, that is normal.

But we won’t remember those moments of normalcy. We will, however, remember those moments that are outliers. They are the moments that don’t make any sense. They may not make any sense, but they do make who we are today.

I am certain that there are some people right now telling a story to their friends about these parents that “dragged their children” onto a ride that was not suitable for them (children). They are probably saying something like, “you should have seen that little princess! She had no business at all being on that ride! Those parents have no idea how to raise that little girl! They are only doing things for themselves (parents)!” Oh, how wrong they are, for I have a little girl who is dainty, loves pink, twirls when she walks across a room, but can drop kick like no other 5 year old I know, begs her daddy to wrestle every day, and loves going as fast as possible, even if she is wearing her princess dress!

Thank God for outliers.