Unique, weird, quirky

I am in a quandry this morning. A bee in my bonnet. Confused about life and messages we  send around and share.

It all started with Shane Sonkind who entered for The Voice South Africa 2019. We watched his blind audition Sunday night.

He makes furniture and music. My husband and I sat enthralled. He walks to his own drum beat. “We need to create – make art, because technology is taking care of the rest,” he eemarked in an interview.

His young son, a mini-me, works with his father. I hope you watched the footage! When his dad was on stage, the little boy mouthed every word of the song lyrics, his eyes shining brightly. Love for and pride in the man walking the road of life with him. His joy when his dad got a four chair turn! Beautiful.

Also, Shane surprised everyone by not selecting the obvious coach. This guy knows what he wants. Knows himself. Celebrates his uniqueness.

https://youtu.be/cgypvumZmtQ

How refreshing.

When last did you do something from scratch – a dress, a table, curtains, pasta? In this hard consumer driven instant world it is liberating to put something out there that is irreplaceable – from your own mind, hands. Something handmade, authentic.

Do you live authentic and as an example for those around you – your spouse, children, friends, the stranger that you come across?

Then irony hit me. Each one of us is hand-made authenic by a loving Creator. A Creator who promises us that each hair on our head is counted, that He loves our uniqueness, our one of a kind nature.

 “Before I shaped you in the womb,
    I knew all about you.
Before you saw the light of day,
    I had holy plans for you:
A prophet to the nations—
    that’s what I had in mind for you.”

Jeremiah 1:5 The Message

Yet, yet. We seem to be searching souls. Continuously, instead of resting in the knowledge that each and every quote, wisdom is not new. It merely echoes God’s wish for each of us.

In this evolved, modern age, we have lost touch with our own uniqueness – fitting to norms, going with what is popular, getting lost fitting in.

As if to confirm what my bee is buzzing about, I happen upon a post on weirdness by Elephant Journal. I have listed the quotes below.

The bee left my bonnet. I am straightening my crown, combing out my rays, like the sun in the illustration.

Weird, unique, quirky is my normal. Tailor-made! Each one of us are. We just need to be ourselves.

1. “Be weird. Be random. Be who you are. Because you never know who could love the person you hide.” ~ C.S. Lewis

“There is no beauty without some strangeness.” ~ Edgar Allen Poe

“What makes you weird or different, that’s your strength.” ~ Meryl Streep

4. “You’ll turn out ordinary if you’re not careful.” ~ Ann Brashares

5. “She dances to the songs in her head, speaks with the rhythm of her heart, and loves from the depths of her soul.” ~ Dean Jackson

6. “Maybe it’s just in America, but it seems that if you’re passionate about something, it freaks people out. You’re considered bizarre or eccentric. To me, it just means you know who you are.” ~ Tim Burton

7. “Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.” ~ Ernest Hemingway

8. Be daring. Be different. Be impractical. Be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers. The creatures of the commonplace. The slaves of the ordinary.” ~ Cecil Beaton

9. “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” ~ Aristotle

10. “Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.” ~ Morticia Addams

11. “I hope to arrive to my death late, in love, and a little drunk.” ~ Atticus

12. “To be successful, your focus has to be so intense that others think you’re crazy.” ~ Kim Orlesky

13. “If you don’t fit in, then you’re probably doing the right thing.” ~ Unknown

14. “Just keep moving forward, and don’t give a sh*t what anybody thinks.” ~ Johnny Depp

15. “Stop trying to explain yourself. People only understand things from their level of perception—within the parameters of their agreement with reality.” ~ Steve Maraboli

16. “It is ever so beautiful to be strange. To do things differently than others. To see things in a rare light. To me, that is such a gold to carry.” ~ Christopher Poindexter

17. “But darling, we weren’t given this wild soul just to merely exist. Our mission is to shake up this world, turn it upside down, and show our fellow humans the difference between breathing and being fully alive.” ~ Unknown

18. “There are parts of me that will always remain untameable, messy, and reckless; but I refuse to apologize for it anymore.” ~ Kaitlin Fester

19. “Be brave. Be wild. And stay forever hungry for art, love, knowledge, and adventure.” ~ Erin Van Vuren

20. “I’m with the dirty mouth girls. The ones with bare feet, brilliant minds, messy hair, wild hearts, and feisty spirits. The ones who aren’t afraid to speak up and who live for doing what they’ve been told is impossible.” ~ Brooke Hampton

21. “She accepts your compliments on her face, her hair, and her body graciously—and she is, indeed, beautiful. But she is only moved when you notice the beauty of her spirit.” ~ Allaisia Hanan

22. “If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your sh*t, then you deserve it.” ~ Frank Zappa

23. “I will not be another flower, picked for my beauty and left to die. I will be wild, difficult to find, and impossible to forget.” ~ Erin Van Vuren

24. “Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow.” ~ Vincent van Gogh

25. “She was one of the rare ones, so effortlessly herself, and the world loved her for it.” ~ Atticus