Average What You Say, Mean What You Normal

Dear Children:

There are some powerful arithmetic terms that we use quite casually and to our peril.

Average means the result obtained by adding several quantities together and then dividing this total by the number of quantities. When you get to sixth grade, all will be revealed. In everyday parlance, to be average is to look and act like everybody else.

Normal is used to denote conformity to a standard or range of standards that marks us as one of a desired group. Normal people are those found in the fat part of the bell curve of people that live approximate to us. Normal people in Chad do not look or act like normal people in Norway.

Mean is another arithmetic term used to find a point that is equally distant from two extremes or poles. Snooty people are fond of asking whether you are referring to a distributive or statistical mean. Ignore these people

Nobody is average. Most of us are normal inside tightly defined and typically suspicious criteria.

For our purposes let us not use these terms when referring to people. It’s simply not useful. More often it’s dangerous and hurtful. I’ll tell you why.

I love professional basketball. Professional basketball players conform to a highly desirable group. None of them is normal despite this conformity. To be sure, they are all freakishly able athletes who earn their living playing basketball but, beyond that, there are no things that can be said about an individual professional basketball player that is true of all the others or even a few of the others. Kobe Bryant, like all NBA players has excellent cardiovascular health. His resting heart rate is 35 beats per minute, well to the left on any NBA beats per minute bell curve. Shaquille O’Neal is both really, really tall and really, really heavy. Shaquille O’Neal bears no resemblance whatever to Yao Ming. These three are used for illustrative purposes because no NBA General Manager says to his Director of Player Personnel, “Get me an average player, please”.

Just so, you should be suspicious of attempts to categorize yourself. The one thing you have in common is one grandfather. That is a good thing for me but it doesn’t offer much currency generally. No bank in the world will lend money on such thin collateral. It sure couldn’t get you elected President of the republic.

You are all smart in different ways. You are all good looking in different ways. Each of you will make a way in the world that is different.

More to the point please do not make life decisions based on “average” or “normal” criteria. Our job is to discover the thing for which God has designed us. There is a delightful turn of phrase in the 10th chapter of Job where the bewildered servant nevertheless acknowledges: “Thou didst clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. Thou hast granted me life and steadfast love; and thy care has preserved my spirit.”

I hope that applies to fitness as well. Here the averages and the norms and popular wisdom serve only as a hint to what comes next. Each of us was uniquely knit. The extent to which we accept that fact proceeds to informs what’s best for us individually.

On the iPod today was the musical comedy Chicago and the soundtrack from O Brother Where Art Thou. Both have astonishing music and catchy lyrics. The stories they tell are quite different. The former is cynical and coarse and advises we "Go to hell in a fast car" while the latter is all about the "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and the hope of heaven.

Much Love,

Poppy