tightroped

Today up at tea in NCBS someone said to me, "The strangest thing about Gautam is that he's surprisingly normal."

At the time, given that I was sitting amongst a group of nerdy scientists, I suppose I took it as a compliment.

It isn't really one though, is it. The last thing I want to be is plain old normal. I want Me with a capital M.

Problem is, there are enough flavours of 'normal' to go around. Alright, so I don't fit the crazy-scientist bill. But in my tea-time buddy's head, evidently I'm part of some stereotype. Maybe it's Wannabe-Intellectual Who Needs a Haircut. Or even worse, Urban Anglicised Upper Middle Class Yuppie.

That's my catch-22. I spend a lot of my soul-searching time looking for that one spark which makes me unique, which sets me apart, defines me as a person- but at the same time, subconsciously, I mould myself to a whole bunch of stereotypes so that I can belong to a certain group of people that make up my social universe.

I guess the trick is to reconcile these two opposing pulls. Be yourself but don't end up living in a cave, somehow. The thing is, the latter often seems to overpower the former.