Archived writings (Apr 2006): "This is what I¹m thinking..."

This is what I¹m thinking, alone among all these crazy people. What is it exactly that defines sane from insane? Sanity is defined by social norms, by what is considered “normal” by our peers. Yet if I was anywhere else - in another country, another tribe, surrounded by people who have other notions of what is sane – I might be the one that’s insane. Maybe they are all normal, and I’m the abnormality. Maybe eating paste does require a higher functionality than what I possess. I mean, who eats paste? Why do they eat paste? Maybe a wax crayon or two thrown in there for good measure would not only mix up the textures but also provide a distinct yet familiar flavour from childhood. Maybe “my fragile little mind” as Cartman from South Park would say, can’t handle the truth and purity of eating paste. Is there a difference in hierarchy of those who eat paste compared to those who eat bugs? There are various societies who have survived by eating various creatures, insects included. Who am I to say that they are insane because I prefer not to taste the exoskeleton of a 6-legged creature that spends its life in the dirt or god forbid - feces? If it’s normal for some, how can it be considered abnormal for another?

I have to also consider that if I were to be in a room full of serial killers, would I then not be the odd-person out? The abnormality thereby defined as insane by those around me? I mean, I’m sure there has to be something fundamentally wrong with these people, there has to be – but what exactly is it that makes them insane? Is it the act itself? Is it the thoughts behind the act? It is the thoughts leading up to the act? Is it their childhood being reflected back into the present time affecting their decisions in the here and now? If they grew up in a violent home and violence towards others is the only thing they know, then it’s their “norm”; therefore it’s sane for them. It’s the only thing that makes sense to them. I mean - norms are essentially what we learn from birth onward. It’s what we’re taught, to colour inside the lines, to deviate is to be punished – but who decides what is the absolute right and wrong? State? Religion? Parents? CNN? If it was an absolute right against an absolute wrong – why are there so many differences in all of the cultures of our small little mother earth?

I must admit, that without these differences, we’d live life as clones of each other. Nothing different, everything the same just so none of us were considered “different”. How would we grow? How would we learn from each other if we were all identical? Some twisted and sick horror film would result and there would be absolutely no meaning to life. What is the meaning of life anyway? Hasn’t it been thought over and hashed out for millennia? Why are we then no closer to the truth? Maybe, it’s because we continue to search outwards for the answers instead of within ourselves.

I think the crazy people are the sanest of all of us. They don’t care about the price of gas; how their RRSPs and other futures are doing on the stock market; if the car they drive or the house they live in is “respectable” enough for their “class”; how they will deal with their own fragile bodies once it starts it’s inevitable decline into old age and whither into dust - dealing with day-to-day-to-hour-to-minute-to-second PAIN that never seems to go away. All they do is sit around and examine the world exactly as it is, for them, in their own reality and live in the now, from moment to moment - living life in its bliss. I have to wonder which of us is truly “insane”. Maybe I’m just plain insane for even thinking about this.

Then again, maybe I’ll eat some paste…


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