There is no Normal only the Illusion of one

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203699404577044641783511780.html?mod=lifestyle_newsreel
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When "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1" opened at midnight Thursday night, the theaters were packed with giddy teenagers ready for the latest installment of the vampires-and-werewolves tale.
What is it about young adults and the supernatural?
As teenagers we exist in extremes. During those angst-filled years, emotions are raw and fresh, and life experiences are few, so every feeling is intense and unprecedented. It's easy to go blind within the brackets of our adolescent years; it's easy to forget that an entire future outside of high school still exists.
At 16, we're never the right color, the right shape, the right kind of rich or poor. We're unique, just like everyone else; we're misunderstood and stereotyped, just like everyone else. We're each very different and therefore exactly the same.
Supernatural and paranormal fiction mimics these feelings perfectly. Characters with strange powers, circumstances and destinies are different from their peers and, in being different, give teenagers someone to connect with.
In many ways, life is much harder in adolescence. We feel trapped as teens; we're too young to move away or get a job, and we're not yet articulate enough to tell the resident bully in our lives to go to hell.
The fantastical, on the other hand, provides the escape that young minds desperately seek: It takes our weird teenage quirks to extremes, creates hyperbolic situations wherein the protagonist (read: the person who always felt different and/or special) is transported from the ordinary into the extraordinary and, subsequently, catapulted into a life far more interesting than one might find in reality. These stories sustain us. In fact, it can actually hurt sometimes to be stuck in the normal world for too long. It can hurt to be forced to attend school every day while your fictional friends conquer evil without you. I would know.
In 1998, Harry Potter and I were both 11 years old when he got accepted to Hogwarts and I didn't.
I remember sitting in my room with that book clutched to my chest, thinking I knew too well what it was like to be left behind, feeling like I, too, lived in a cupboard under the stairs. I wore the ugly insurance glasses that didn't fit my face well. I wore my brothers' hand-me-downs that were five sizes too big for me.
I wasn't quite a teenager yet, but somehow I already knew I was terribly misunderstood (just like everyone else) and that I wanted, so desperately, to be accepted to Hogwarts (just like everyone else).
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In reality there really is no "normal". Normal is the ultimate illusion and all truly successful people realize this. The "normal" rules actually are for children that one is trying to discipline whereas adulthood is only about opportunities. Opportunities are only about whether you see these opportunities and act on them or whether you are so caught in a personal illusion that you miss real opportunities when they exist to move forward in your lives.

Part of the problem of our over specialized culture is that  it seems like everyone just has to only work at one trade for life. Whereas, statistically the average person has at least 5 different professions in the course of their working life. One's internal experience and external experience of life are usually different. However, if one actually begins to understand how things actually work one can manifest many of one's internal desires externally in a way in which one can feel it useful to go on living while watching for the next big opportunity.

I am presently 63 and have now been married 3 times with one biological child with each wife. I am on very good terms with all my children and am on good terms with my first and present wife. Before I got married I had many many girlfriends which I consider both a good thing and a confusing thing at the same time. However, knowing many women as a young man made me much more aware of the world in all ways. It made me more of a traveler both internally and externally. It made me grow up in ways I never would have otherwise. It showed me possibilities beyond my wildest dreams regarding world travel, spiritual travel, etc. I have watched people I knew stay with the same church they were raised in and marry the first girl they met and often they never went anywhere and still live in the same town. Sometimes they are happy and sometimes not. I have met people who have dated women all their lives and lived with 20 or more women and are now my age and traveled all over the world as musicians and they are no more or less happy than the people who stayed in their childhood church and married the first girl in their lives. Normal is an illusion. It is whatever you believe it is that works for you to survive your life. I know many people who likely if they married the first girl they met would have killed themselves by 25 or 30. I know many people who if they spent their whole lives traveling now would be single and very confused.

I guess what I'm saying is that there is no useful normal that fits everyone. Everyone is very different in the end and when people can't see that they  they tend to live in a very small view of reality usually. But then again that can be a good thing or a bad thing for then because normal is an illusion. It is whatever you think it is in the end.

For me, I tend to prefer to live in a very expanded view of reality that includes all philosophies and religions. My point of view is: As long as what you believe in doesn't hurt anyone you should basically believe whatever you want to that keeps you alive. Just wanting to stay alive can be a very difficult and complicated thing, especially in the western world. If you want another take on reality just travel to a third world country and talk to people there. The differences in how they perceive reality in comparison to how you do will definitely shock and surprise you. And maybe that would be a good thing for you to see as well.

People in the western developed world are very unhappy now because they perceive that they have less. And yes it is true that 75% of the wealth of Americans is in their homes they own and now 53% of that real value is gone since 2007. So yes, that much of their real wealth has disappeared. But if you still have the people you love, your friends and family, then you are one of the richest people on earth!