Adaptation: Accepting the Abnormal as Normal

Have you ever seen one of these banks before. They're called Fifth Third Bank but their logo looks like a fraction, and 5 thirds is 1.6666667.

This isn't a local bank where I live, but it is where I'm traveling to. It's weird because people who live about it talk like it's nothing weird. But pole a random stranger and I have to believe most will see the 5/3 logo slapped up on a bank and not even know what they're supposed to call the bank.

I think that's common. Sometimes there are things around that are so weird that they seem normal.

I think there are things in our life that seem "normal" that are probably super bizarre. Things in our own lives, good and bad. I think about the movie Precious from a couple years back and you have a one of those common situations portrayed where someone is in an awful, messed up situation, and yet to them, caught up in the middle of it see it as normal. This is obviously can be a characteristic of abuse, normalization of something so abnormal.

It can be good things to. Sometimes, I think I forget what a wonderful wife and family I have that some how I get caught up in the trees and don't step back far enough to realize how wonderful my wife, mother, father, and kids are to me. It's incredible how quickly we normalize.

Psychologist George M. Stratton did experiments in the 1890s about the brains ability to take inverted images and over time flip them right-side-up when these types of goggles were worn days on end. The brain is an incredible thing the way it can normalize so much.

Normalization is an incredible thing. Although that's not an excuse to not be grateful for a great family, or to accept abuse, or to think that a bank called fifth third even begins to make any sense.