Embrace Your Quirkiness – It’s What Makes You You
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EYQ, Yo-Yo, You-You – Gotcha! Bet You’ll Remember Now!
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Some thoughts on Quirkiness
Cape Town, on my 69th birthday, 9 October 1957
With thanks to Michael Leunig, Trevor Noah and all the artists and comedians and amazingly authentic people I know.
One of my recent mantras and encouragements to myself first and now other people is ‘embrace your quirkiness.’ I think I’ll just make up a new (potentially epic?!) acronym ~ EYQ. I laugh often, mostly at my own jokes and twisted way of seeing the world – is this being quirky? Isn’t this what comedians and artists do and we have great respect for them? Mentioning I ride a unicycle to people brings me subtle pleasure and a curiosity about how they will respond … to this form of quirkiness. I’m still climbing trees at 69 and some people seem to think that is unusual; really?! Why? These musings got me thinking … what is quirkiness really about?
Is being stuck in a habit quirky? [SHQ, Stuck Habit Quirkiness?] I have a Greek salad plus custom extras with ranch dressing most days because it delights my taste buds and because I need to eat a salad every day to keep me moving and grooving (TMI, sorry). How is that quirky?! It is healthy. Anyway, don’t most people have ‘seasons’ of eating certain foods and then move on to something else of interest (I used to eat popcorn for lunch every day)?
In order to really get a better understanding of quirkiness I did some semi-rigorous field research via WhatsApp … with my family … okay the sample is small, until you know I come from a Catholic family … I regress. The clinically constructed research frame: “Thinking about my saying lately, ‘Embrace your quirkiness.’ Realizing I’m not always sure what is the difference between my ‘normal’ self and what I consider to be quirky. Curious to know what you consider to be a few quirky things about me, if you care to comment.”
My favourite response was from my youngest sister, Melissa, “The inquisitiveness that makes you want to examine your quirkiness is quirky. [CIQ, Curiosity and Inquisitiveness Quirky?] Most of us don’t give our own quirks a second thought.😘😘😘 I love you all, and your quirks! That’s what makes you, You!” There you have the essence, a definitive definition of quirkiness – doing what makes you uniquely You. Another sister reminded me that my first independent ‘grown up’ reading of a recipe and making brownies (‘all by myself’ at +-10 years old!) had me interpreting ‘mix by hand’ as literally using my hands and fingers to mush together all the ingredients: flour, cocoa, sugar, eggs, etc., kind of like working clay. [LIQ, Literal Interpretation Quirky?] I thought they tasted just fine – and at the time none of my siblings said I was being quirky and refuse to try them.
When asked for perceived examples of my quirkiness, my youngest child, now 27, said “How we can say anything and you go ‘X’, what a concept.’ Like you’ll turn on the light in the kitchen and say ‘Light, what a concept’” [CQ, Conceptual Quirkiness?] And another example, ”One book you are reading can have 100 sticky notes, essentially one on every page” [SNQ, Sticky Note Quirkiness?] What’s so quirky about that? I want to be able to go back to things I found interesting and important. (And it’s none of your business that I haven’t gone back to those notes yet!) And another “You are detail oriented within an inch of your life. So instead of saying ‘I left the remote on the shelf’ you’ll say, ‘I left the black TV remote with the rounded battery case to the left of the other TV remotes just under the left edge of the TV screen.” [DOQ, Detail Oriented Quirkiness?] Nice to know our children pay such close attention to us.
So I’m guessing how we like to receive directions or how we give directions says a lot about our perceived level of quirkiness – the person giving directions in the opposite way to our way is quirky! [MDQ, Mis-Direction Quirkiness?] Are the directions very specific, giving precise names of roads and highways, using north-south-east-west orientations and direction of turns (is it ‘turn north’ or ‘turn right?!) – or – those who use picturesque language – when you see Ouma’s Bakery on the left, then turn right and go along until you see this huge oak tree in the centre island and then turn left …
I heard many sounds in the forest on a recent walk and stopped for others to hear them – wind in the leaves, water flowing while still out of sight, a Gymnogene/African harrier hawk screeching, buzzing bees in a tree. And I mentioned the relevance of a book I’m nibbling in, ‘Theosony: Towards a Theology of Listening’ by Nóirín Ní Riain, who introduced us to wonderful music and playful human spirals in Ireland. [TLQ, Theosonic Listening Quirkiness?] A few people were annoyingly surprised to have their conversations shushed … AND all of them enjoyed getting in touch with the often hidden secrets of the forest; well, no one complained so I think my interpretation is fair. How could listening to the sounds of the wild be quirky?
Is anything countercultural quirky? [CCQ, Counter-Cultural Quirkiness?] What cultural norms is something falling outside of or violating to qualify as being quirky? Our minister, Robert, preached on ‘the interruption of the eternal same is the gate through which the Messiah comes,’ a quote from Walter Benjamin. Noticing, breaking, stepping into counter-cultural awareness and spaces … I wouldn’t have defined as quirky before … but now I think it is. Ways of seeing our culture differently can be quirky … defying, twisting, challenging. I never imagined Jesus from my Christian tradition as a quirky teacher, which I’m now suspecting is probably why I find him so compelling.
Let’s get out of my subjective experience into broader cultural understandings; quirk – from the Oxford dictionary: “a peculiar aspect of a person’s character or behaviour; ‘they accepted her attitude as one of her little quirks.’” The Cambridge dictionary says: “an unusual habit or part of someone’s personality, or something that is strange and unexpected.” And at Merriam-Webster.com: “quirk, noun. An abrupt twist or curve; a peculiar trait: idiosyncrasy; accident, vagary as in ‘a quirk of fate.’” Some synonyms are idiosyncrasy, peculiarity, eccentricity, mannerism.
Surely my child raising strategies are not peculiar or eccentric, are they? Using humour or distraction rather than telling, raising my voice or punishment were my preferred approaches to managing undesirable behaviours of our children. [HDQ, Humour & Distraction Quirkiness?] Some might call these approaches unusual; I call them effective. One child (who will remain nameless) did not like to get out of bed in time to get ready for school, so a fun game was created – rolling them out of bed onto their duvet and pulling them on an early morning adventurous, zig-zagging ride on the wood floors into the kitchen where breakfast awaited, all to great laughter and scary ‘whoahs.’ Or when our children said ‘like’ for the third time in one sentence I realized a cultural language problem was emerging. So every time I heard the word ‘like’ I cleared my throat or coughed, as a way to let them know I noticed, to help them notice as a form of helping them be aware … and eventually as a way to extinguish the behaviour. They hated my throat clearing, gave me annoyed looks, joked about it, and all eventually stopped saying ‘like.’ (One of them thanked me recently for having done this; nice.)
When socializing at friend’s homes I often find the children and play games with them, preferably ones we make up. The hosts often say later ‘Thank you for playing with the children.’ The adults don’t get it, I am the one who wants to play! [PQ, Playfully Quirky?] And kids want to play with me; of course, kids love to play. One younger kids’ favourite homemade games played in the Shay household is ‘log rolls,’ where the child lays on the duvet at the foot of the bed and many extra pillows are arranged at the head of the bed. After some banter and stalling to build tension, I fling the duvet upward at speed, rolling the light young person over and over crashing into the pillows, among much laughter … and to the horror of some squeamish parents who are not used to such raucous games. I playfully went to the Rush Extreme Sports Club (think LOTS of trampolines, connected) last month to bounce around and see if it might work as a venue for my 70th birthday party. The highlight of the adventure was a seven year old I had been jumping next to coming up to me and saying earnestly and innocently, “I didn’t know they let old people in here.” I laughed so hard and continue to every time I remember. Of course young at heart (read ‘older’) people ‘just wanna have fun!’
In the culture I grew up in it was normal and acceptable to do April Fool’s jokes on April 1st, and we had great fun developing novel ones (often making up a wild story with a hint of possible truth), catching people out, then saying ‘April Fool’s!’ So I guess these jokes are not considered quirky as they are somehow part of the culture. I suspect some forms of practical jokes are quirky – you decide. [PJQ, Practical Joke Quirky?] Is it quirky to stumble upon a frozen dead racoon in a snow bank and decide to surreptitiously sneak into your friend’s residence hall room while they are in the cafeteria eating (yes, college/university pranks), prop the racoon up on their bed with a note around its neck and then wait in the room above to hear the reaction when the discovery is made (‘There’s a dead racoon in my bed!!!’). Okay, there was an important context: somewhat like the horse head from the Godfather … it was an attempt to put an end to a series of practical jokes that were spiralling out of control – it worked, that was the final one. Or how about having a shoe box on my res hall room windowsill with green grass growing in it … so I could smile cheekily and say to people that I was growing grass (as in marijuana, dagga). Or sneaking onto the roof of the eight story residence hall and dangling a rubber hand with fake blood on it from a string so it bounced on the windows of unsuspecting women friends and enjoying the shrieks we heard (before our quick departure from the roof).
During my Morning Pages free writing (an extremely therapeutic Artist’s Way discipline) many interesting thoughts emerge that take me to wide ranging and curious places. Recently I started doing mind maps of ideas that had some complexity and coherence, instead of trying to write everything out in prose. Mind mapping is an obviously helpful strategy for someone who leads from an Enneagram type 5 style with a core need to understand things and how they fit together with other things. I don’t think making mind maps is quirky … even if doing one a week … or is it? [MMOQ, Mind Map Organizing Quirky?] Hmmm … here are some recent ones … maybe my thinking itself is quirky? [QT, Quirky Thinking?]?
a. ‘Expectations almost always leading to disappointment’ in the centre, with many different examples around it;
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b. ‘The Hermeneutics of Narrative: The Stories We Tell: Meaning Making’ at the centre with some spokes being Developmental Psychology, Existential Philosophy and multiple interpretations, Cognitive Complexity, ‘The Social Construction of Reality’ (Berger & Luckmann) , ‘It’s All Invented’ (Zander), Spiritual Development, and Epistemology;
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c. ‘Ways to Play more with Strength Workouts – now called Playouts!’ in the centre, with many possible forms of playful strength building activities around it;
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d. One of my favourites being fleshed out at the moment is ‘The Unity of All Things’ in the centre. Once I have more clarity on this topic I’ll be sure to share it – may be my first book. Einstein struggled a bit with this, so it may take me a touch longer than I originally thought. Of course I’ll need several conversations with some the quirkier among you to help sharpen my thinking!
Oh, is making up acronyms quirky? [AQ, Acronym Quirkiness?] In a recent clean up and purge process around the house I made up the acronym DON, which has been surprisingly helpful and inspirational in cleaning up and throwing things away – the Death Of Nostalgia!
Time to stop. Now that I have been so vulnerable with you … next time we meet please tell me some of the quirky things you do. Hmmm, on second thought, maybe you won’t even know as you’ll Think Your Quirks aRe Normal [TYQRN?]. Better yet, ask me and I will tell you some of your quirks, what makes you You!
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