On Being Normal

It's a beautiful Autumn day, just past noon. I'm pretty sure the sky is clear because I see crisp shadows cast upon the fallen leaves in my back yard as the Sun's rays make their way through bare November tree limbs. If it's not clear, then it's mostly sunny anyway, I suppose. It should be a good day for birds, too. They're probably pretty active on a fine day like today, but I really can't be sure because their songs are muted by the R-13 wall insulation and double-pane windows that keep me so comfortable this time of year. And even if that weren't the case, the dishwasher is running in the kitchen so all I can hear is its "swish" and "rumble" as I sit at my dining room table typing on a fully-charged laptop that is plugged into the wall and connected wirelessly to a router that is cabled into Comcast's high-speed Internet at $80/month. But anyway, the birds are probably happy today, this typical day in the life of a typical American in the year 2016.

Normal. It's all very normal. I got up this morning, not to the sound of birds chirping at dawn as I did in my tent days, but because I was just done sleeping. I had no idea what time it was so I walked into the kitchen and glanced at the digital clock on the electric stove. It was close to 7:30am. The birds would have finished their morning songs some time ago, but that thought never crossed my mind because that's not something that normal people think about. I looked out the window and wondered what the temperature was. I don't have a thermometer hanging outside my door like I did in my tent days because it doesn't really matter what it's like outside anyway. What matters is the temperature inside my house, which is always right at 70 degrees, maintained automatically, day and night, Summer or Winter.

I've been out of my tent for nearly two years now. It took me that much time to decide to start writing again. I had to figure out what I wanted to say, but I think I've got a pretty good idea now. And I think this Tent Living blog is the place to say it, not because I still live in a tent, but because tent living was but one chapter of a story that I'm ready to continue now. It's the story of the multitude of social constructs that mankind has created for themselves, and our capacity to accept them. It's about the struggle within each of us to reconcile two inner voices. Two voices that I believe each of us hears, in some degree, for it's a human condition and we are all much the same in that regard. It's about the struggle to find internal peace and happiness while living a normal life. To find beauty and contentment and meaning is a man-made world. To shine brilliantly right smack dab in the middle of being normal.