The Quite Surprisingly Difficult Courage to Be (Just A Little Bit ) Weird In the Park
A One-Page Personal Memoir zine
The Quite Surprisingly Difficult Courage to Be (A Little ) Weird In the Park
EVERYDAY EXPEDITIONS is a personal memoir, one-page zine created with love & courage by Christine Gerber Rutt. Brewed in Basel. 18.6% Sassy.
a ‘zine is a micro-publication (a mini-magazine) that produces small tingles of joy, typically much more flavorful than that of a large-scale publisher & is independently produced. These artisanal publications are characterized by their emphasis on uniqueness, flavor & brewing technique. This particular ‘zine is 100% hand drawn with a Pilot V5 Hi-Techpoint 0.5 black ink on one sheet of recycled paper.
— For the first time ever, you can purchase a physical copy to be mailed to your home. —-
The Inspiration
One afternoon I was alone, walking in Schutzenmatt Park in Basel. Slowly I became weirdly self-conscious that what I was doing was just a little bit off-the-main-grid.
Often when I go to the park I’m normal. I do things like: reading (quietly) on a bench. Or walking (quietly). Or talking (quietly) with a friend.
The Social Rules here in Switzerland often feel like (quiet) non-negotiables. It feels as if there is no getting around them. As if everyone else follows them—and I must too.
These Unspoken, Seemingly Non-negotiable, Social Rules seem to revolve around the spinning carousel of:
Don’t be too loud.
Don’t stand out.
Don’t draw any attention to you whatsoever.
Do not go even one-degree, just a tiny little bit off-the-main-grid.
These Unspoken, Seemingly Non-negotiable Social Rules seem to apply to:
how loud you talk
how loud you dress
how loud you smile.
I’ve spent my entire life noticing and adapting to Unspoken Social Rules. Like when I went to my dad’s Black Bumper Mennonite family (that’s like the Amish but with cars, as long as the chrome bumpers were painted black, cuz chrome is…I don’t know, too loud) and then going to visit the other side of the family, one uncle who had not only chrome bumpers on the red cars in his garage but also a life-sized Playboy poster hanging above the workbench.
It was social expectation whiplash.
In the first place I learned that everything, including my knees, needed to be covered (socks securely held with rubber bands were handy). In the second place I learned that, apparently, much much less needed to be covered.
Noticing and adapting to Unspoken Social Rules also came in very handy when I lived in the Middle East and my neighbor was a legit (albiet at that time disowned) daughter of a king from a neighboring country.
Princess Neighbor had broken the Royal Spoken, Seemingly Non-negotiable Social Rule of marrying someone who wasn’t the “right” kind of Muslim. (Spoiler Alert: years later the apparently non-negotiable bind was rescinded. The ousted princess reconciled with her father, the king, and they were all allowed back into the family palace. Fairy tales do come true?)
In case you didn’t catch it, let me spell it out for you: “Spoiler Alert” →sometimes what appears to be non-negotiable is negotiable. Or is only temporarily non-negotiable. Or, in a different environment, is completely obliterated. Things change. Rules do too.
The Experience
As I said, one afternoon I was alone, walking in Schutzenmatt Park and became weirdly self-conscious that what I was doing was just a little bit off-the-main-grid.
Weird thing is that the weird thing I (felt) I was doing was (and it’s ok if you laugh here): I was wearing a hat.
Who does that?
Not me.
Not usually.
Truth is, it wasn’t even very big. Not really.
But I don’t usually wear hats.
And people here don’t normally wear hats with a brim wider than an inch or so.
There is no rule saying you can’t wear straw cowboy hats in Switzerland but truth is, when I’m really super honest: I felt very conspicuous.
The Difference Between Usual & Normal
We often confuse usual with normal.
But usual and normal are not the same.
Usual is the particular way I tend to do that thing that I most often tend to do. It is usual for me to wear jeans and a t-shirt. I usually go to sleep at 10 pm.
It is not usual for me to wear hats.
Normal, on the other hand, is an Unspoken, Seemingly Non-negotiable Social Rule. A norm. An expectation. A Social Should. A request, or perhaps an external command to “do as we do”.
It is normal to walk on the paved path in the park. It is normal to not shout in the park, if you are over ten years old.
Normal is often translated as: It is okay to do this. It is not okay to do that.
Normal dangles a silent promise of belonging.
Normal makes you indistinguishable from others. Normal is a social should. A philosophy. A belief. Normal kills uniqueness, innovation, and integrity.
In Basel normal means:
you will see a field of darkly-colored coats in winter.
you will see cigarette butts lining sidewalks.
you will see people in the park being inconspicuous
As you can see normal does not mean good for you. Or even for good for all. Or even, actually, universally normal.
The courage to be just a little bit weird is the courage to be not normal, not usual.
The courage to be just a little bit weird is the courage to be unusual, out of the ordinary, uncommon, extraordinary.
The courage to be just a little bit weird is the courage to be extraordinary.
The courage to be just a little bit weird often has nothing to do with what people around you tell you to do but with what you usually do.
The courage to be just a little bit weird is often about you simply doing something you don’t usually do…and you feeling uncomfortable doing it for the first time.
The Hope
There are a million ways to walk in the park.
How do you usually do it? Can you change one small thing and do it just a bit differently than you have in the past?
Can you take a moment to notice if instead of walking in your shoes on the paved path, you want to take your shoes off and walk in the grass.
Or maybe you want to swing and feel the wind lift your skirt around your head as you laugh like a 6 year-old high on life.
Or maybe it’s not the park at all that you want to push your edges with. Maybe not going to the park is what you want. Maybe you want to grab your mountain bike and speed down a trail.
What happens when little by little you allow your usual to be unpredictable, unusual, extraordinary?
Let your way be your way, today. And let it change tomorrow. Or even now.
Give yourself permission to change in these seemingly small ways. Shift the way you perceive yourself, you shift the way you experience life. Over time these small, incremental acts of small subversions add up to you showing up in the park and inspiring other people with your YES, just as Armando inspired me with his not-at-all-silent shout of Yes! (see page 5 above)
the support
This zine was inked a year ago as part of a series of zines I initially made just for myself. I didn’t share it at first because it seemed so silly to feel weird simply for wearing a hat in the park.
But I finally decided to share it because I’ve been noticing how those seemingly “silly” things point to deeper, more pernicious ways of being in the world. The social shoulds that many of us un-thinkingly follow are Unspoken, Seemingly Non-negotiable Social Rules. But often these rules are arbitrary and often only in our minds.
We think we can’t. But what if we can?
Show us who you are. Let your insides show up on the outside. You don’t have to live life like everyone else is. Chances are even if you think you are acting normal, you are still acting distinguisably from others. So why not have that thing you do be distinguished by what you want to do, by being true to yourself, instead of what you think others think you should do?
PS: I can’t believe I need to say this but this is not a permission slip to do something illegal or harmful or stupid.
Weird is a purple flower in a field of green grass.
Be weird.
I recommend clicking the button above to get a copy of this 8-page zine and reading it while listening to Dance in the Sunlight by Lost Frequencies. and doing something (a little bit) weird in the park.
If you’re at a crossroad, are you able to hear the whispers or your heart telling you which way to go? Are you able to translate the quivers you feel into actual action? If you want help hearing and translating what your intuition is pointing you towards, book a private Intuition Expedition with me. In this special private session, we create space to hear the whispers of your heart so you can feel confident in taking your next step in your own unique and extraordinary way.