Dear Pogue,

I came across a quote from Sylvia’s Plath yesterday where she said she had learnt “to embrace her own weirdness”. It sort of struck me that in doing so she found her own creative genius and whilst her life was a troubled one, she left us with a legacy of great poetry. Her life would have been what it was regardless of her creativity so, maybe in an often dark world she found a light, a way?

Which brings me to my Musing. In a world of conformity, how much is lost because so many never embrace their weird? I mean, the world I live in doesn’t want weird because weird so often lays outside of the bounds of what is defined as normal, predictable, to be relied on. After all, the reliable, the predictable make life controllable for those who presume to run and organise our worlds. Normal makes the marketing of products doable, predictable and profitable. It makes money. Safe to say, the world doesn’t sit comfortably with weirdos.

But it needs those people, it really does, for if there are none that think and act outside of the norms there will never be change or progress. Everyone becomes a shade of their neighbour with similar likes and dislikes and the world gradually takes on a vanilla hue.

So this morning I want to encourage you to embrace your own weird. It may be rather insignificant, maybe a different shade of lipstick or eating ice cream with your steak, but it’s there inside of you, wanting expression, wanting to experiment and you will not know its potential for your own wellbeing and creativity until it’s out there. Change your lipstick today and…tomorrow you may find yourself buying clothes you never thought you’d wear and, hey, you feel good in them and…you’ve booked to change your hair and…now you feel comfortable to hang out in that place where the people who you have believed are “my people” hang. One small step to a life full of possibilities!

If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.

Maya Angelou

Be brave and you’ll find freedom. Be different, according to what lies within you and give it life, and you may walk on paths you’ve only dreamed about. You may create a legacy for others to appreciate. You may find the joy that alludes so many. Everyone of us starts life as a unique individual, one of a kind, yet so many die a copy of everyone else. That’s beyond sad because so much that would have coloured the world has never come to be. So much that would have made the world a better, more interesting place, has gone untapped.

Just start with a small step. Changing the world is a gradual process. And there is inevitably pushback because, well, “different” makes so many feel uncomfortable even threatened. It’s outside of their comfort zones and unpredictable. Who wants “unpredictable” in their world? Tell me, is it that so called “normal” people fear their world will be disrupted by someone who is different, or they see in that person something that is suppressed or lost in their own life? Maybe they are brought face to face with a challenge they are not prepared to meet. I often wonder why so many are uncomfortable with those who express a freedom that could be inviting but they embrace as threatening. I guess it’s Jonathon Livingstone Seagull stuff.

When we allow ourselves to exist truly and fully, we sting the world with our vision and challenge it with our own way of being.

Thomas Moore

This week find a little of your own weirdness and let it run free. Just a little. Don’t step too far from your comfort zone if you are not ready. Little steps. That said, you may just explode onto the scene because you’ve been suppressing all that difference, all that latent expression and, hopefully, talent for so long. I’ll wait to see.

Yours, off to find a steak and ice cream recipe,

Wic