What does 'normal' mean? This is a question I have been pondering for a while, and the answers have a lot to do with your happiness.

I love words, so my investigations began with the word itself and where it came from. As it turns out, it's derived from a tool called the carpenter's square, which is used to measure right angles. Way, way back in the day (we're talking B.C. here), builders would take three wooden rulers and nail them together, creating a right-angled triangle. In Latin, this tool was called a norma. That's where normal comes from, meaning "in conformity with rule."

This mathematical rule is all well and good for architecture and engineering. But normal has gone further, insinuating itself into the rest of our lives in a way that needs a lot more interrogation.

Normal is used on people, as a way of judging some as acceptable and some not. It's based upon the false idea that there is some objective standard that we should be striving to meet, a rule about what is required of us in order to be worthy.

Normal is used in our lives as a way of brush off harmful conditions. It's normal for that person to treat you in this way. It's normal that your work never lets you take breaks. It's normal to have to handle everything on your own without help.

Normal is used to downplay the external conditions that matter so much for well-being. For example, here in the United States, over half a million people go bankrupt every year because of healthcare expenses. In this country, we treat that as normal — even though citizens of many other countries would look at that as very abnormal indeed. Or it's normal that there are a handful of people who have so much and billions of people with so little. Or it's normal that companies are not held responsible for their negative impact on our planet.

Normal is an illusion made by collusion. To be maintained, we just have to unquestioningly accept everything that we have been told about what's normal. To be dismantled, we just have to start asking questions about what's normal, and whether it's working for us, and what we'd prefer instead.

This week, I want us to collectively challenge our ideas about normal and ask: where can we raise our standards for what we will accept for ourselves, our lives and our world?

Take care