Oswald Chambers states in his book The Moral Foundations of Life in the chapter Natural Growth in Supernatural Grace, “If you live much by yourself you become an oddity, you never see the quirks in yourself.”
Most people want to be unique, but don’t want to be perceived as odd. By definition, there are no degrees of uniqueness. Either someone is the only one of his kind or he is not. On one level, everyone is unique, but superficially most people are not.
Since most people have a social life, their quirks in behavior are not peculiar. They can’t be if they’re going to have a social life. Being sociable requires staying within the boundaries of what’s considered usual behavior and not scaring people by behaving and/or thinking in ways unexpected. Insecure people find comfort in predictability, so when a person comes along who is enigmatic (as in the sense not clear to understand), he acquires the label of being odd. Once that happens, anyone who associates himself with the odd individual risks becoming an outcast from his own kind.
There exists a poignant difference or incongruity between what is expected and what actually is in regard to being superficially unique. It’s hypocritical to diagnose superficially unique persons as a minority to be biased against. That’s being prejudiced and proud. These are the days the majority insist on tolerance of all individuals, but yet those making the most noise in that populace are unable to see their own quirks because of being enmeshed into their own agendas.
Taken from Sally Holloway’s interesting article How to spot a true oddball, I’ll zip down to THE OFFBEAT INDEX of Dr Weeks’s 15 characteristics of eccentrics, in descending order of frequency (the first five apply to virtually every eccentric):
1 Non-conformity
2 Creative
3 Strongly motivated by curiosity
4 Idealistic
5 Happily obsessed with one or more hobby horses (usually 5 or 6)
6 Awareness that he/she is different from early childhood
7 Intelligent
8 Opinionated and outspoken
9 Non-competitive
10 Unusual eating habits or living arrangements
11 Not very interested in the opinions or company of others, except to persuade them of the “correct” point of view
12 Mischievous sense of humour
13 Single
14 Eldest or only child
15 Bad speller weddings as being far too messy
I need to point out an extra tidbit for number 13’s being ’single’. It is possible to be more single married than single. Number 15 has me confused because I don’t know what a bad speller wedding is. Is it when two people who are bad spellers get married, because having one bad speller is messy enough so two would only double the mess?
Golly… if articles like Ms. Holloway’s on oddballs can’t get people to understand why there are some who think being ‘normal’ is actually a ‘disorder’ then I guess the gap might be bigger than I thought! Neurotypicals tend to fit the description of neurotics more than Aspies do, which would beautifully explain why society would like to alter the way most Aspies prefer to live rather than try to understand them and accept [better yet→ appreciate!] whatever differences exist. Here’s another piece from this mentioned article:
One of Dr Weeks’s most vexing diagnostic tasks was to distinguish between eccentricity and neurosis. “Simply put,” he says, “neurotics are miserable because they think they’re not as good as everyone else, while eccentrics know they’re different and glory in it.”
