What is the normal to go back to?

September 2, 2014
Day 125

And then we all woke up one day, and September was here.  School was back in session.  Our normalcy, or something closely resembling it, had finally resumed.

But what is the normal to go back to?  So often in life, we crave the average, the everyday, if for no other reason then because we know it.

Normal is normal.  It's always the same, or at least mostly the same, right?                               
          

Wrong.  Your summer might be unofficially over and your local school may be very much officially back in session, but life's still going strong.  The Earth is still spinning around, and it's revolving around the sun all the time.  Life as we know it hasn't really changed that much since last week.

Sure, some of us had vacation, or extended time off of some sort in the past few months, but none of that drastically changed the normal life we're still living.

Life is always in flux, always moving, always normal, and at the same time, often abnormal.  We are, all of us, in this state of constant change.  The normal we crave is just a temporary break from the crazy abnormal we often get in life.  And sometimes the normal we think we're going back to is just more of the same, more of the unusual, more of the non-ordinary.

Living an extraordinary life means stepping out of the normal as often as we can, and not just over the summer.  It means coloring outside the lines and dancing in between the tables.  The normal we really need most is the new normal of a life lived fully.  And we can do that in the classroom as well as we can on the beach, in the workplace as well as in the mountains, in the normal as well as in the abnormal.  Go with the flow and rewrite the story.  You may not stop Earth from revolving around the sun, but you might just find yourself flying through the galaxy on an orbit of your own making!