The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

by Gabor Maté

For better or worse, we humans have a genius for getting used to things, especially when the changes are incremental. The newfangled verb “to normalize” refers to the mechanism by which something previously aberrant becomes normal enough that it passes beneath our radar. On a societal level, then, “normal” often means “nothing to see here”: all systems are functioning as they should, no further inquiry needed. The truth as I see it is quite different. The late David Foster Wallace, master wordsmith, author, and essayist, once opened a commencement speech with a droll parable that well illustrates the trouble with normality. The story concerns two fish crossing aquatic paths with an elder of their species, who greets them jovially: “‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’” The point Wallace wanted to leave his audience pondering was that “the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones hardest to see and talk about.” On its surface, he allowed, that might sound like “a banal platitude” but “in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life-or-death importance.”