I’ve recently gone insane. Snapped. Crazy. Off the deep end…and I’ve never been happier 🙂
In honor of my newly found craziness, I’ve been enjoying playing around with the concept of insanity. What does it mean to me? What does it mean to be insane? Out of your mind? Out there? Strange? Weird?
Let’s dive in for my thoughts 😉
First, let’s examine the word “insane”.
I’m “in” “sane”, or “in” my “sanity”.
Well that doesn’t seem so bad!
I sure as shit don’t want to be “out of my sanity”. That doesn’t sound very pleasant!
IN my sanity sounds a lot better. Outside of my sanity sounds quite crazy!
I’ll take insane. That sounds like it’s ok to me.
Perception baby!
Next up we have “out of your mind” –
I’ll quote Tony Robbins on this one…“stay in your head and you’re dead”.
The mind is an awful place to be inside of! It creates problems, stresses, worries, anxieties. I’d love to get out of my mind!
Sanity? I’ll be inside of that. That sounds ok.
The mind? This ceaseless thinking device with constant chatter, I have to be inside of this thing all day?
No, no thanks. I’d rather get out of that fucker.
And when I do my craziness techniques, that’s exactly what they do – get me out of my mind.
They help me to access flow, to lose myself in a state of strange where the present moment becomes an expression of creativity.
The brain stops chattering. The inner critic stops. I take a step out of the ordinary mind I experience on a day to day basis.
Finally I have a break from this fucking thinking device called the mind!
And I’m not the only one – I get a lot of people who tell me they can’t stop thinking and their mind races.
They would love to get out of their mind!
So again – this out of your mind business doesn’t sound all that bad.
In fact, it sounds like theres a legitimate demand for this out of your mind stuff!
Now what about “lost my mind”?
Well, I believe that in order to find ones RIGHT mind, you must lose the old one first!
Lose the old ways of thinking, old ways of behaving, old decision making patterns that are no longer serving you.
Lose the weak, afraid, anxious mind and instead find the strong, loving, courageous mind!
So yea, quite frankly, I’m happy I lost my mind! He wasn’t serving me very well.
I’ve found a new mind, a new way of thinking, that seems to be making me a lot happier!
What about “out there”?
This is another one I can accept and live with.
I AM out there, as in, out there in the world. I travel for a living. I’ve lived in 5 countries in 8 years and seen 20 others along the way. I’m definitely outside of the norm, and I’m definitely not inside of the traditional system.
I like to imagine that traditional society is sitting in a classroom looking out the window.
When they look out the window, they see me, “out there” – dancing naked in the courtyard with wings flapping (yes I have wings now).
They think, “man that dude is out there!”
Yes. I am out there. Free. Shaking my balls. Flapping my wings.
While you remain trapped in the prisons of society. Trapped in imaginary handcuffs.
Free to break the bonds, walk outside, and shake your balls with me at any moment, but not realizing and acting on that potential.
“Look, he’s out there, free, shaking his balls, while I’m trapped inside of my mental prison.”
I’d much rather be “out there” and free, than “in here” working a job that I hate and causing myself stress like the rest of society.
….
Moving on, let’s look at the word “strange”
The definition I got is, “unusual or surprising in a way that is unsettling or hard to understand.”
Damn I like this one too!
Unusual – that sounds creative! I definitely don’t want my work to be described as “usual”
Surprising – well surprises are always exciting whether good or bad! I’m happy knowing I have an effect on people that surprises them.
Unsettling – Sometimes people will get mad at you just because you’re having fun and they aren’t. Sometimes my activities might be perceived the wrong way. While I don’t want to unsettle someone, it happens! In all honesty though, I like it! I want to shake you up a bit. I want to leave you unsettled so that you change things about your life you’re unhappy with instead of “settling” with it.
Hard to understand – good! I’m trying to get you to think fucker! I’m trying to make you ask yourself, why on earth would this dude be doing Karate on a rooftop and chanting made up languages?!
Strange sounds pretty fucking cool to me! Call me strange all day baby. I like it!
Now things just keep getting better from here – Our good ol’ pal “weird”?
“suggesting something supernatural; uncanny.”
SUPERNATURAL BABY!!!!
This shit is fucking superpowers!!!
Who would have thought, weird is A DIVINE POWER!
Think about it – where does our weird come from?
We all have a weird muse, some strange place of childish inspiration. It IS a bit supernatural!
The more I continue, the more I not only accept, but LOVE my newfound insanity!!!
And how can we have a discussion on insanity without looking at the word crazy?
Well there’s two definitions for crazy, and I think that’s pretty accurate.
The first is “mentally deranged, especially as manifested in a wild or aggressive way.” – This is the bad type of crazy. The type of crazy we’re all in agreement we don’t want to be seeing.
But then the other definition, (I can’t make this shit up), is “extremely enthusiastic.”
I LOVE IT!
EXTREMELY ENTHUSIASTIC.
Well fuck, that describes me to a T!
I can’t lie, I am a VERY enthusiastic person. By that definition, they are 100% correct.I’m crazy as shit. Batshit crazy out of my mind!!!!
And now my personal favorite that I have to save for the end – “Lunatic”
This is an interesting one. The definition of lunatic was simply “mentally ill”.
But how does one define “mentally ill” – what is the definition of mentally ill?
Well, it’s vague. “Mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions — disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior. Examples of mental illness include depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addictive behaviors. Many people have mental health concerns from time to time.”
Hmmmmm 😈
This sounds like most of society!
We all know people who suffer from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and addiction problems of all kinds. Mental health is a huge discussion right now.
You see – the norm is crazy to begin with. Society is a bunch of lunatics.
Stressed out. Anxious. Obese. Depressed.
To a bunch of lunatics, crazy is normal, and normal is crazy. So because I’m perfectly healthy and living a happy life, I’m officially crazy as fuck!!!!
Could the sweet irony truly be that the best way to break out of lunacy is to become crazy!?!
And that’s my queue to stop here and lie that debate to rest. I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing this 🙂
