The Beautiful Weirdness of Lately

The weirdness of lately has rendered me relatively enraptured. I think I've gallivanted across the entire realm of weirdness in recent months. It's been awesome.

As far as I'm concerned, weird is good. In fact, weird is great. Flaws are what separates real from fake. Give it to me raw, unfiltered, and authentic. 

 

According to Merriam-Webster, 'weird' is defined as: 

1.) Of strange or extraordinary character: odd, fantastic

2.) Fate, destiny. 

(Okay, yes, there is also a third definition that says: "of, relating to, or caused by witchcraft or the supernatural" but at the end of that definition, the word "magical" is listed as well...so that much is fitting for my purposes)

 

From eating ketchup with a spoon to slightly bizarre/irrational fears of the bottoms of shoes and shower drains (though I still believe these are completely legit...), I am fairly confident that I've got all facets on the Spectrum of Weird covered.

But the weirdest of all the weird things in my life is without a doubt life itself. Especially in recent weeks, I have found myself enamored by the beautiful weirdness of lately. When I think about what has transpired in the past few months of my life and how straight up weird it is that things are the way they are right now, I am flabbergasted. What if "X" had never happened? What if "Y" did happen? How different would my current state of being be? The tiniest of things can completely shift the course we are on and the direction we are headed. The smallest smidgen of fate or coincidence can yield entirely different outcomes. Life is not a prerecorded tape...it is LIVE. And as Bill O'Reilly knows, sometimes you just have to accept that and say "F*ck it! We'll do it live!" (warning...explicit language in that link).

For instance, if I hadn't absentmindedly forgotten my laptop and turned around halfway to the Metro this morning, would I still have ended up sitting next to and chatting with the most charming old man who told me I reminded him of Lucille Ball? Probably not. And anyone who knows me knows that something as simple as that absolutely made my Monday. What better way to start the week? Yeah, I'm weird.

 

Obviously that example is a on a fairly small scale in the grand scheme of life, but sometimes it is those seemingly small scale things that domino their way through to something much bigger. A random event, a spur of the moment visit, an instance where something or someone just clicks...moments in time where you're left sitting, smiling, shaking your head, and chuckling to yourself, "How on earth did I get here? What plot twist resulted in this? And how lucky am I that it did?" And it's not just random things happening to each of us that spur the ol' Butterfly Effect. How we act and react have just as much of an impact on our own fates and those of the people around us.

I say this: Embrace the weird. Flaunt the weird. Pay attention to the weird. Because the weird is what stands out, separates the beauty from the norm, and opens doors you may not have even realized existed in the first place. The weird is where the heart is.

WE ARE...WEIRD!

Screw normalcy.