There are some very smart new doctors and psychologists who are blowing the definition of neuroses and personality disorders out the window. They are making the case that if 84% of the people living in Manhattan (or Kansas or Greece) have been analyzed and labeled as having some sort of personality or psychological disorder, this is actually... normal!
I hate to further hit you over the head with this, folks, but it looks to me like they are absolutely right. Everyone I know has a family member who is a drunk/addict/other-sort-of-ingrate and certainly we share a propensity for high anxiety, depression, melancholy, elation, exuberance, talkativeness, introversion, extroversion, hoarding, spendthrift behaviors, distraction and everything else under the sun.
And our children? Why some of them talk just about at birth and the others not until they are four or five, but most of them eventually do talk. And then we have our family weirdos. One walks with their feet splayed out, the other is ding-toed, some have extraordinarily long tongues, others have short fingers. Why I've seen infants' heads so large I wonder how their necks avoid collapsing... and it all seems to be in the range of normal. Redheads could be about the only class of humans who are actually quite rare.
So as I embrace my anxieties, mourn for the pet who died or the parent, thrill at the sight of my grandchildren performing on stage whether they can dance or not and enjoy the company of my very 'neurotic' friends and certainly introverted husband, I will sing the praises of general humanity.
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