There’s this Tame Impala song that I really like, ‘Music to Walk Home By’. It has nice beats and tunes, and i love listening to it from time to time. I didn’t pay attention to the lyrics at the beginning but one day i decided to look them up and see what they meant. Most Tame Impala songs have different meanings and it all depends on how you interpret it. For this song, i found this one interesting interpretation which basically said that song is kind of about ‘yearning and being unsure about yourself’. For some reason, this really clicked with me and it did make sense. Kevin ends the song with
‘In so many ways
I'm somebody else
While trying so hard
To be myself
I just need to hear
Somebody say
This will all make
Sense one day’
and a nice riff. Later that day, when i thought about these lyrics, i kind of realized how a lot of times i have tried to be someone else so that others (in general) would like me. And at the same time also trying hard to be myself. I think i had this feeling growing up that people would think i am weird if I didn’t like what a ‘normal’ person likes to do. Or if i did something that others usually don’t do, then people would think i am weird. I do think I was/am always too self-conscious of what others would think. This made me ask myself, is it not okay to be weird? What if someone is slightly weird? What is weird?
I guess when I think of weird, I really mean doing something that deviates from the behavior of an average person in some sense. For instance, every other gen z person I have seen in Austin loves boba tea. I honestly find it to be ‘useless’. It’s hard to explain why I think it’s useless. But for some reason, that’s always the word that comes to my mind when I think of boba! I do believe it’s overpriced like crazy and a tea with little balls isn’t worth $7-8! And every time, I share this opinion of mine with someone, I feel I am being judged or thought of as weird. Like one time all my friends were getting boba after dinner and I was the only one not getting it, and I felt was being judged as weird that day.
But now, I realized that most people I know are actually weird in some way or the other, they all have their own quirks. And there’s nothing really bad about it unless it’s an annoying quirk. I felt that being weird in some way is what makes us unique. If everyone was just ‘normal’ or average, the world would be a boring place. Sure, my opinion on boba is probably weird but there’s nothing really bad about it. The smartest people have also been known to be extremely weird (probably due to lack of social connections). Tesla, fell in love with a pigeon. Sure, that’s an extreme example but even in my experience, the smartest people I have met are usually very weird. And that’s okay. I am neither that smart and also not that weird.
For instance, I think if I had to pick another quirk of mine it could be that I come off as slightly too ‘intense’/‘excited’ if there’s something that I like or excites me. Sometimes it’s nice and sometimes it’s not. But that’s me. I do feel self-conscious about it from time to time as in if I am being too chatty or too pushy and feel bad about it. Like, someone told me that a close friend of mine told them how I kind of wouldn’t shut up one time I think. I did feel bad but I also realized that the close friend in question is still a close friend. If it really bothered them then I guess they wouldn’t be a close friend anymore. Sure, I was probably being too chatty but that’s okay. There will always be people who will like you despite all your quirks (to some extent). What I am trying to say is that I or anyone else don’t need to be 'that' self-conscious because everyone else is weird as well.
Having said all of this, i do think it is nice to have some balance when it comes to being weird. I have this theory that almost everything can be framed as regularization problem so I will now bring in some ML terminology and frame being weird as a regularization problem. Suppose, we have a mean square error loss function that measures how far we go from being ‘normal’, and we have a penalty function that measures ‘weirdness’. I think the answer to ‘To be or not be weird’ lies in minimizing the following loss function with respect to lambda, the hyper parameter for weirdness:
L = MSE(You, Normal) + lambda*weirdness
We can figure out the lambda that minimizes our loss function and the corresponding parameters to the ‘model’ driving us. The solution gives us a nice equilibrium where we are just the right amount of weird, making us unique and be ourselves.
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