Photograph “Standing Figures (Thirty Figures) by Magdelena Abakanowicz” taken by B.G. Thomas

 

“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” ~~ Maya Angelou

 

I am so thankful that I’m not normal!

 

I once had a lady at work walk up to me in the break room and say, “Hey Ben, I didn’t know you were in school!”

 

I looked at her from the book I was reading, confused, and told her that I wasn’t. She looked shocked.

 

“Then why are you reading?” she asked me.

 

Because I like to read,” I told her.

 

She looked at me shocked and then bragged that she hadn’t read a book since high school.

 

I’ve learned she is “normal.”

 

That’s not me.

 

“Normal” people have nothing to do but talk about sports. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with sports, but it’s sad if that’s all they have to talk about. “Normal” people thought it was perfectly all right to deny two people who were in love the basic right to get married.

 

It amazes me to think of all those years I wished—with one huge consuming desire—to be normal. I cried myself to sleep many a night begging God to make me “normal.”

 

Well, thank God I’m not normal!

 

Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh of Egypt, was not normal. The Egyptian that believed there was only one God and who changed art, culture, and everything. He wasn’t normal.

 

Plato, Socrates, Galileo and Sappho were not normal. Hafez, Rumi…they weren’t normal. Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci weren’t normal. Neither were Degas, Monet, Manet, Picasso or van Gogh. Shakespeare certainly wasn’t. Chopan wasn’t. Mozart and Beethoven weren’t, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were far from normal.

 

Darwin wasn’t normal. Thomas Edison wasn’t. Marie Curie, Einstein, nor Faraday were at all normal.

 

Anne Frank, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Earhart, and even Joan of Arc could hardly be described as “normal!” Rosa Parks wasn’t.

 

“Normal” people think that animals don’t love. In fact, I don’t think “normal” people really have a clue what unselfish love is.

 

“Normal” people don’t wonder about the nature of the Universe or ever question their part in the Great Scheme of Things. They really don’t question at all. “Normal” people look at me blankly when I ask them what their dreams are—what they think they were set here on Earth to do.

 

“Normal” people think they have the ear of God, and that their religious beliefs are the only correct ones and that everyone else in the world is wrong.

 

And deep down inside, whether they would admit it out loud or now, “normal” people think they’re better than everyone else.

 

Ernest Holmes and Charles and Myrtle Filmore definitely weren’t normal. Mother Theresa wasn’t normal.

 

James Broughton certainly wasn’t normal and neither was Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin or Jean Cocteau. Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman weren’t normal.

 

John Lennon wasn’t normal either.

 

Stephen Hawking isn’t normal, nor Eckhart Tolle or the Dali Lama.

 

Bono, Better Midler, Lady Gaga, Sting, Cyndi Lauper and David Geffen; none of them normal.

 

I repeat myself. Why would I want to be normal? Why did I want to fit in?

 

Then it occurred to me. I do fit in! I fit into a world of amazing and wonderful and artistic people. And while I am not famous (yet), I have still touched lives with my art.

 

I fit in just fine.

 

And I am so grateful that I’m not normal!

 

And I am really grateful that you’re not either.

 

Namasté,

B.G. Thomas

 

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B.G. is a novelist and blogger. For the past year he has made and entry every day in his blog “365 Days of Silver,” where he finds something every day to be grateful for. You can find it right here: https://365daysofsilver.wordpress.com/

 

B.G. loves romance, comedies, fantasy, science fiction and even horror—as far as he is concerned, as long as the stories are character driven and entertaining, it doesn’t matter the genre. He has gone to conventions since he was fourteen years old and has been lucky enough to meet many of his favorite writers. He has made up stories since he was child; it is where he finds his joy.

 

In the nineties, he wrote for gay magazines but stopped because the editors wanted all sex without plot. “The sex is never as important as the characters,” he says. “Who cares what they are doing if we don’t care about them?” Excited about the growing male/male romance market, he began writing again. Gay men are what he knows best, after all. He submitted his first story in years and was thrilled when it was accepted in four days.

 

“Leap, and the net will appear” is his personal philosophy and his message to all. “It is never too late,” he states. “Pursue your dreams. They will come true!”

 

Visit his website and his author blog at http://bthomaswriter.wordpress.com/ where you can contact him. He loves to hear from readers and is always quick to respond.