As the evening wore down, one of my friend said to me, “You know, Don, I think I just assumed back then that everybody was special, that everybody wanted to live an exceptional life, but it isn’t true. The older I get, the more I realize people don’t really know how to live well. There are not very many special people in the world.” …

Now, by special I do not mean talented, rich or famous. I have very few friends like that. I just mean people who are doing life differently, whether that means home schooling their kids or showing their work in galleries or inventing a different kind of bicycle to save a country. I am talking about people who take social norms as suggestions, not mandates…

It’s not that I think normal people are boring or not good enough, it’s that normal people often have beauty and strength and abilities they aren’t using. In America, normal means that you are a follower, a consumer, not a creator. I don’t mean to sound judgmental, but I have felt this way for a long time. The truth is I don’t want to live a normal life. I want to homeschool my kids, on a boat in the Jervis Inlet. I want them to know that if they want they can grow up and be Senators, or Opera singers. I want to study Michaelangelo in Rome and Florence, I want them to worship Jesus in a Buddhist temple, befriend famous authors, assist in surgeries in the third world, ride their bikes across Africa and disagree, at thirteen, with columnists in the New York Times. Why? Because they can, and nobody is stopping them.

Many of us are normal because we are afraid. We aren’t taking responsibility for the exceptional opportunities that are laid before us. We have failed to realize that God shares agency with us. He shares his power, and even His will. God is the Father sitting with his child at a giant, blank piece of butcher paper asking us what we want to draw. And within reason, we can draw whatever we want….