012: WEIRD

I was in choir practice. I wanted to experiment with using my voice in a different way, but actually it was something I had heard some music artist do so it wasn't really my own original idea. But it was my idea to try it out in choir practice, I guess because I thought my voice would blend in with everyone else's. Unfortunately the friend who stood next to me heard my little experiment. And she told me: "Why are you singing in that weird way? Are you trying to be something?"

Yes, I guess I was. I was trying to be something. Testing out something different. But after that, it would take many years before I would dare to try doing something...Weird...with my voice, again. Doing something different.

Other things that I heard when growing up was that I made weird faces. I remember I used to be a bit like an open book. As a child, I thought it would be easier to interact if people just showed how they felt, but the adult world seemed to be built on lots of hidden emotions. And it took me a while to understand why they were doing that. From my child-vantage-point it just seemed to cause unnecessary drama or extra layers of complexity, instead of just being straight. And I practiced over time, to fit into that kind of behavior, because I understood overtime why they were doing it, after hearing these comments about making weird faces or having to be more neutral-looking when performing piano - not swinging around so crazily while I was playing, but sitting straight and proper...

So, ovetime I also learned to hide my face. My emotions. To hide what I felt. And I became so good at hiding my emotions, that I didn't even know what I felt in the end. I remember a relationship ending because I had learned to play the role so well, the role of what I thought was expected of me in that constellation, that I could no longer recognize myself. I didn’t know who I actually was and felt I was disappearing. I would completely disappear - whatever “I” was - if that relationship continued. So the only way for me to try to get back to myself was to end it. And to this day, I struggle with finding the balance between being honest and authentic, while also trying to avoid unnecessary harm. Trying to see when my honesty will bring value, and when it is actually better to bite my tongue. I also swung too far in the other direction, of maybe being overly honest, because I was so frustrated with my tendency to people-please. So now I’m just looking for this middle point.

Sometimes, nowadays, I think that this may have to do something with some kind of a neurodivergence on my part. In my youth, the only neurodivergence that was visible and talked about was the more extreme kind, like the autistic geniuses with zero emotional intelligence or the hyperactive kids who couldn't sit still at all. We didn't even have such a word as neurodivergent. It was just, weird, or different. I knew I was weird, but not “THAT” weird, so I guess I kind of settled on the self-identity of being part of the masses, just experiencing myself slightly off sometimes. But making sure to hide it when I could, because it was just easier that way.

But these days, as these things have become more openly discussed, and I've learned about the discreet way that masking functions for neurodivergent people, I can't help but wonder, how much masking have I not done, in my life? All those times when my behavior was deemed as weird, all those times when I got a clear signal, that my weirdness, or my being different, was a problem I needed to change to fit in. But then I wonder, isn't everyone masking, to some extent? Or are there people with a bigger tendency to do so?

I think that there are people, who simply can't mask anything, because their particular way of being, or their frequency, flows out just as it is and they are, for better or worse, who they are. And then there are those, who I also was, or maybe I still am to a degree, who function a bit like a chameleon. We will get our colors from the environment we're in, and we can't help but adjusting to it. At least, that's how it usually feels for me, though I have tried to practice staying in my own energy or my own way of being a bit more. And stand in my own truth. Which can be a challenge when that truth shifts and changes, depending on the situation. And it’s not so stable as it seems to be for some people.

I wonder if people who function as chameleons more often hear that they're being too weird simply because others expect that they should be more adjusted, more in tune and mirroring the group, because that’s what they usually do? So if a chameleon suddenly starts painting itself in its own colors, its seen as much more weird than if it would come from someone who was never able to be a chameleon to begin with? There’s simply different expectations

Maybe my friend in that choir practice expected I would echo the normal way of singing, as I always did, in that childhood choir, and then she was very shocked to hear my experimentation simply because it so clashed with her expectations for me?

I'm my teenage years, it almost felt like the tables were turned. I was attending a kind of bohemian high school where I studied in a visual arts specializated group. Now, when the majority were “weird art types”, it almost felt like the mainstream was being a “weird” person. In those days, there was a derogatory name for weird kids, "ernu", coming from the words “erilainen nuori” in finnish, meaning, simply, “different youth”. I remember people who did not see themselves as connected to the term and who saw themselves as normal. They used it in a disgusted tone, while us, the weird kids, started using it in a proud, but also playful way. I was experimental with my style, I had to experiment with different ways of expressing. Somehow I just couldn't help it. Something wanted to come out and be expressed through my form. So I could not escape from that label, and then I did not care to escape it. So embracing the term of “ernu” the “different youth” was my first experience of the act of taking a negative label and embracing it, turning it into something empowering and affirming instead.

Weird doesn't really exist unless we compare it to something else. Without something that we call the normal, it would make less sense to point out what is weird.

And what is seen as weird is usually only weird within that selected group, community or culture. In another group or in another culture, it might be the other way around. Something else is seen as weird and something else is seen as normal.

One thing that I felt gave me an advantage in noticing these things was growing up with a dual citizenship and access to learning many different languages. Different languages are interesting in the way they enable different ways of thinking and perceiving. Languages construct reality in different ways. And this in turn might be connected to the development of different behaviors connected to that language or that culture, or maybe historical events in that culture play a bigger role in this: in developing different behaviors and different ways of being.

When I was nineteen I moved from one country to another, from Finland to Sweden, and experienced firsthand the cultural differences that even such a small move, just to the other side of the Baltic sea, could result in. Again, I was told that I was weird, in Sweden, at a pre-party. A fellow student told me that I did not belong in that group because I was too silent. In this country being silent and observant was seen as weird, while that had never been such a big issue in Finland.

I think that these experience of being judged naturally creates a counter reaction where you can't help but also judge the other back. Like when I was called “too silent”, inside of me there was something that activated anger and annoyance, like: “well, maybe you’re tlaking TOO much, or maybe you can’t appreciate silence”. So there’s this tension between the opposites. This conflict. And maybe a counter-reaction that got activated in me when I was being called weird was that I went even farther in my so-called weirdness than I might have needed, had I not felt such friction to the world of the so-called normal. I gained comfort in attaching myself to the weird but this also meant that I created distance and separation to something else.

Maybe this is only natural, maybe we humans need smaller groups or labels to attach to to feel belonging. But sometimes I wonder... Can't it go too far in both directions? Both too far in forcing a molding into the normal, and in attaching to the weird? I don't know. I'm not exactly a poster child for moderation, but lately I've started thinking more and more of, how can we actually reach a deeper sense of connection, that goes beyond any groups or labels? Is it possible? Is this even is something to aim for? Or am I just being naive and overly idealistic? Is that just because of my own chameleon-type of way of being that I am dreaming of that? But everyone can’t maybe go and connect beyond groups and labels. And maybe the groups and labels have their own role to play.

Still, somehow this brings to mind a line my grandmother used to say on the Finnish independence day: "Jos itsenäisyys merkitsee itsekkyyttä, miksi sitä edes juhlitaan?" Which roughly translated means, "If independence means selfishness, why is it even celebrated?" When I first heard it, it was shocking, because it was so against the grain of everything else I had heard, and everything that had been spoken on the Finnish history lessons about how important the independence was for Finland. Independence days are proudly celebrated in many countries, and understandably so, if that independence, that right to be your own country, has been fought for. If that right has been fought for, particularly if a small country has been under the thumb of a bigger coutnry or an empire and there has been a risk that their own particularities would be taken over. Abd still, I can't get that seed away from my mind, that my grandmother planted so many years ago. And I think it boils down to the idea, that if I assert my own uniqueness, I am simultaneously asserting a separation from that, which is different from me. I am assigning it as other from me, as weird. But this is starting to echo some of the things I spoke about in an earlier episode, maybe the alienation-episode, so let's try to get back to the essence. The experience of weird.

So what is weird? How do we construct these notions of what’s weird or not? Well, I guess it is when something differs from what you’re used to, differs from normal behavior, whatever you see as normal.

This brings to my mind an event in the playground, where I was with my toddler on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the summer. I was sitting on a bench, watching my child run, explore and play in the sandbox. Occasionally, I noticed the silence of the calm afternoon would be broken by high pitched screams of “Hey!”. I turned my gaze, and saw a girl standing barefooted by a path, with a round plastic toy in her hand. It looked like the lid from a plastic toy kettle, and she was using it almost as a mouthpiece, or sometimes cradling it as a precious animal, or object, that she would whisper to, and then, consistently and very loudly yell "Hey!" “Hey hey!”

My gaze wandered around, searching for the girls parents, as she was only a few years older than my own child. My eyes landed on a man sitting on the bench next to me. He was calmly gazing up at her every now and then, and he had a pair of small shoes nestled between his own feet. By her barefoot feet I then deduced that these must be her shoes. Occasionally the man would talk in the phone or watch the screen, but his gaze always returned to her. From his calm demeanor, I also calmed down, and accepted the “hey-screams” from the girl as a part of the background noise, blending in with the traffic sounds and seagulls yelling. I could see that the girl closed her eyes sometimes, to feel the cool breeze, that occasionally brought comfort to an otherwise hot day. Or so it appeared. When I focused on that, on watching the way she enjoyed the wind or seemed to enjoy hearing her own voice, I could recognize something that we shared, I remembered how I also sometimes enjoyed feeling the wind with my eyes closed, and I remembered, how I had also enjoyed experimenting with my voice, making weird sounds. I remembered that time in choir practice when I stopped doing that. In the end, I felt a connection to that screaming girl. Instead of staying only in the space of comparing differences, or seeing her as weird, I found shared ground.

But my initial reaction had been quite different, and very judgmental. My first reaction was, “What’s that weird kid doing, standing there barefoot and yelling like that?” I was thinking that there must be something off, something very different about her. And I had felt relief, that my child, was not weird in that way. And I was thinking, that her father must have a tough time with her, or she must have a tough time, in life, because she is so different.

And maybe that is how others have viewed me? But when I feel into it myself, I don't actually feel different, or weird, inside of myself. And maybe, on the broad spectrum, I am not actually that weird. But does anyone really feel weird, if they only focus on how they feel, with themselves? At the deepest core? Aren't we all just who we are, or whatever we are, and all trying to navigate life to the best of our ability? I never thought of myself as being weird until someone pointed it out to me. And now I'm starting to wonder how much of my own "normal behavior" is actually my own, and how much is the chameleon behavior, or the masking, that I developed throughout my life. Well, the mask is slowly but surely slipping down and I can't stop it from falling. In fact, I want to help it down, because it is starting to feel heavier and heavier to carry it, and more and more oppressive on my face. And that girl who was yelling in the playground inspired me, because she was just doing something she enjoyed, and she didn’t care or notice if anyone judged her as weird.

It is time to take off the masks so that we can show, and to see, the so called weirdness. Or just being ourselves. Only then can truly meet each other eye to eye. Or, voice to voice, if eye contact is not your cup of tea. Only if we step out from behind the masks, can we be able to share our own unique treasures. The learning, the things we learned and gathered over our life. The wisdom we carry, that is uniquely ours, exactly because of our difference, or so-called weirdness.

Wow, this episode now ended up as some kind of a motivational speech. Let's embrace that then.

Be weird, because it's actually not that weird anymore.
Or, don't be weird.

Be who you want to be.

However you choose to call it, if you need labels and comparisons to support you,
or if you don’t,

I know that you
can probably also enjoy the feeling
of a cool breeze on a hot day.