[RyanZAG]

You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences?

We all have the same hardware - amazingly complex/simple neural links. We all have different inputs, which means we all think differently. This isn't the important part - the important part is that you can communicate with other people and learn from them - from their different ways of thinking.

So I agree, I never said you were normal. I never said I was normal either, or that anybody else was normal. The idea of normal is something you're forcing on the world. Others are trying to force their own idea of normal on the world too, and yet others are trying to change themselves to match someone's idea.

Throw that idea away and live your own life.

Also, there is a lot of acknowledgment and research in education into the different ways different people learn and how to identify and teach different people. Unfortunately, it's a wicked problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

[nitrogen]

You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences?

It seems quite believable that there is a multidimensional Gaussian distribution of thinking styles, and people at the edge of one or more dimensions can legitimately say that they don't think like most others.

[unconed]

I do live my own life, quite happily, and don't wallow in self-pity. I merely shared an insight that has helped me make more sense of my life after 30 years of living it. I never said I was unique, merely that I deviated from the norm. "I am a lot taller than most people" does not mean "I am a unique giant, woe is me, doomed to tower over the rest of humanity". It does mean that those people get to complain a bit more about cramped airplane seats.

My advice would be to leave the single-comment psychoanalysis at home, and the platitudes like "live your own life" to the trashy advice columns... Instead, go watch the documentary on Temple Grandin, an autist who is definitely further from the average than I am, and whose awareness of her own nature—as well as her ability to explain it to others—definitely improved her own life.