What do you call insane? Then what do you call sane?
There’s a guy from Haskovo about who I am not sure if is constantly drunk or insane. Even when he’s not drunk I don’t think he behaves quite “normally” (whatever normal behaviour means). Some days ago I passed him by in the street and he was talking on the phone (or rather holding the receiver of a street phone). I didn’t hear much but what I heard concerned some “enchanted house in Topolovgrad.” On the next day I met a friend who told me she met another “strange” guy who seemed to talk some incomprehensible things and when she said “goodbye” he approached her and shook her hand, pressing her somewhere between the thumb and the index finger. She told me that after that she felt her hand less stiff and much more relaxed.
I was wondering if there’s some method in the people we call insane. No? How do we know that for sure? And are we sure that they don’t know what they are doing and are the same way as we describe them? Sometimes when you look at them there’s something indescribable (at least to me) that makes them look wise. I think that we can learn something from this “weird” people. Perhaps there is an enchanted house in Topolovgrad and perhaps this guy with the handshake knew what he was doing, only we don’t know it.
And how is insanity defined? Simply by majority. Insanity is what the majority calls that way. What if one (or more) of those “insane” guys tells us that we are insane? It’s not true just because they don’t have the majority, of course. So the only difference is in the number of people supporting the thesis. And is this the right way to treat them? I wish there was a way to look into those people’s heads and see if it’s really the way we think it is – just random, chaotic thoughts, carrying absolutely no meaning. Until then we can never be sure.
I think we treat different people in a similar manner (see Just do it). Yesterday I watched “Man on the moon”. Was the guy different, insane, genius? He played with the crowd. He could make it love him, hate him, laugh at him, anything, and you never (even at the end of the movie) knew if everything was real or just a joke, if he did it intendedly or it just happend that way. Sometimes he behaved madly, sometimes like the most “ordinary” guy. He overthrew the need of set identity and was who he wanted to be. The truth is he loved people and by all of his actions he was actually trying to wake them up. At one point when he was really desperate, he said “I am a bad person.” and his wife replied “You’re not a bad person. You’re a complicated person.”
And are we, the “sane” people, always good people? Do we automatically assume this? I think that our “sanity” has caused much more troubles than the “insanity” of the drunk guy or the guy from Man of the moon.
