I recently scanned a smattering of headlines at one of the political commentary websites I visit daily. Each headline raised a different level of interest in different directions. Some I cheered. Others I lamented. I assessed which team — the good guys or the bad guys — was winning in each particular story.

For example, the CEO of Twitter had to apologize for buying chicken a few days ago. Chick-Fil-A’s CEO happens to hold a tradition biblical view on marriage. Well, it’s Pride Month. Such a publicized purchase was bad form. We are now supposed to infuse buying delicious chicken with a political calculation. I don’t have words to express how utterly stupid that is.

In another story, support for the NFL has plummeted since politics slithered its way into that entertainment sports league. That story made me happy, not because I want the NFL to fail. On the contrary. I want a valuable high-profile lesson about free markets on display for any observant entertainment franchise: keep the weighty politics out of it and stay in your lane. We spend our hard-earned money to go to games and matches and movies and concerts — to escape preachy politics, not get more of it.

I’m convinced that part of the prevailing progressive narrative’s mission is to make normal people feel guilty for being, well, just normal. Guilty for driving cars. Guilty for laughing at a politically incorrect or insensitive joke. Guilty for having privilege. Guilty for going to church. Guilty for eating chicken. Guilty for being a certain gender. Something will be found wrong with even the most mundane and inoffensive occurrences in our lives. It’s like the world is being run by the world’s worst mother-in-law.

I had a chance recently to attend a small awards ceremony for a group of sixth graders, one of them mine. A wide variety of folks filtered into the elementary school gym as the event — held by a local civic group — was getting underway. Parents and family from different walks of life, economic backgrounds and ethnicities came in, and I made it a point to observe them and make eye contact if I could. Out of a couple hundred people I might have known a half dozen.

Beyond visible differences, I have no doubt we’d disagree on a lot of political, religious, and moral issues. We’d each have different life challenges and priorities. And I don’t want to make this into some profound Kumbaya point about our commonality and humanity. But rather, an incredibly boring point about our normalcy. It sounds weird, but I actually find great solace and emotional respite in the sea of normal people who even think and live differently than I do.

When the Supreme Court issued their limited ruling in favor of the Colorado Christian baker earlier this month, a young disappointed gay woman called into my radio show. She told me she was a conservative on most issues, but was disappointed by the ruling because she felt it would keep the door open to gays being mistreated. I understood, but I asked how we get to a point that we treat everyone with respect without hostility to either lifestyle or religious conscience. I’m not sure we answered each other’s concerns satisfactorily, but that wasn’t the point.

Actually, maybe it is the point, that we can talk to each other, disagree even without resolution and the world still stays together somehow. That’s what happens in the quieter, boring sea of normal.

The headlines screaming from the websites we frequent do not reflect the reality of our normal-but-different lives. This whipped up outrage is almost always a mirage, a superficial elevation and amplification of the extreme, irrational, and unstable. In this space there are only villains and saints and we are forced to choose a side. It is designed to appear part of the normal human experience or an accurate reflection of reality, when it is anything but.

In the sea of normal, nearly all people eat their delicious crispy chicken without an absurdly burdensome political consideration, and watch football only to see a good game. So the next time your blood pressure spikes over some story designed to inflame you on a gender, race, or economic issue — retreat to the sea of normal.

It might be a little boring there, but it’s where life is.

Associated Press award-winning columnist Neal Larson of Idaho Falls writes at www.neallarson.com. He is also the author of “Living in Spin.” He is a conservative talk show host on KID Newsradio 106.3 and 92.1, and also at www.kidnewsradio.com. “The Neal Larson Show” can be heard weekday mornings from 8:00 to 10:00. His email address is neal@590kid.com.