The Feeling That You're Going Crazy

there are degrees of madness and the matter you are the more obvious it will be to other people most of my life i have hidden my madness within myself but it is there charles bukowski we all know this sort of madness the sort that does not have clear source nor diagnosis not the extreme cases but the more subtle kind that lurks within all the so-called normal we traditionally only see and call it madness when it has finally reached its apex exceeding its last surface layer into the world past one's abilities interests or willingness to contain it but to at least some extent arguably some form of it is always there we see it on the occasions when we don't quite recognize ourselves in the mirror we feel it when we wake up from a strange sleep and the room is coated with a dreamlike glaze of another reality we live it when we look out at the world up at the sky down the street into another's face and experience a strange disquiet that we haven't the slightest clue as to what we are looking at we know it when we try when we fail when we succeed when a shoelace snaps or a tire goes flat there is that cliched overused saying often attributed to albert einstein but was almost certainly never said by him that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results regardless of its likely misattribution it is fair to accept this as at least one accurate summation of a sort of insanity but if this is true it's not life itself this is not everything in human life an endeavor with the goal of complete resolution of solace of reconciliation of control peace or happiness all of which seem to be and have always been perpetually unsatisfiable unobtainable the human project is a continuous cycle of essentially trying the same things over and over and expecting different results madness is not the exception it is the norm the loss of our early youthful innocence marks the death of sanity not because we are a saner as a young child but because there were no expectations for us to be a young child spouting gibberish or running around with his or her imaginary friend is not mad not crazy he is a child an adult doing the same thing of course is a madman thus it is at this juncture of maturity at which the expectations of sanity are enacted that madness is born it is not behavior alone but the confined nature of how we can no longer behave which synthesizes this sort of internal experience of a general madness only when the child in us is muzzled and clothed in a straight jacket do we suddenly feel this madness previously inexistent to us we don't suddenly know perfect sanity but we somewhat suddenly must act as though we do what follows is a sort of sane insanity of life it is likely that every one of us experiences thoughts desires compulsions or behaviors realized or unrealized that are by all general standards dipping into some depth of lunacy men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness wrote blaise baskal madness is perhaps one of the few words that accurately summarizes humankind so succinctly touching both ends of it the good and the bad the noble and the absurd [Music] the day-to-day requirements and expectations of social living to be calm certain patient responsible impressive rational and all the rest can in any given moment go against all the likely equitable reasons to not be any of these things we are made out of and live in the constant flurry of simultaneous electrical firings and chemical discharges of a brain trying to map a self onto a universe of exploding and shifting matter we sit at the end of this chaos trying to narrow the ocean of time and space into a tiny little canal to successfully function at all let alone impressively across a whole lifetime is as much of a wonder as being itself in the first place this world does not budget well for its own insanity it does not consider or pat itself well for the mad people nor the stable person's periods or moments of madness the expectation of sanity arrives every morning at 9 00 am it awaits us in nearly every interaction the fact that such a world such a life expects us to be sane is perhaps one of the most obvious examples of its own madness we expect the world and the world expects us to be clear to be lucid to be rational but that mad child is still inside us existing with its relative stupidity but denied the innocence to justify it screaming and shaking muzzled and straight jacketed never fully ready to grieve its own death perhaps then to some extent at least on occasion we should be understanding and forgiving to ourselves as well as others if that child breaks out to blow off a little steam if we act out of or at least apparently out of character if we make jarring new decisions if we lose a little grip if we act a little foolish there is a wisdom in this sort of general madness a wisdom that reminds us that there are no right paths no set directions no certain answers no dumb questions that up is down and down is up that the world is anything and nothing that it's not that serious in the words of carl young be silent and listen have you recognized your madness and do you admit it have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness you wanted to accept everything so accept madness too let the light of your madness shine and it will suddenly dawn on you madness is not to be despised and not to be feared but instead you should give it life be glad that you can recognize it for you will thus avoid becoming its victim madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies but even more to daily life since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical man strives towards reason only so that he can make rules for himself life itself has no rules that is its mystery and its unknown law what you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life this 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Channel: Pursuit of Wonder

Views: 548,093

Keywords: pursuit of wonder, madness, sanity, crazy, exurb1a, sisyphus 55, school of life, what is madness, the sanity of madness, kurzgesagt in a nutshell, wisecrack, inspiration, video essay, motivation, aperture, philosophy, science, consciousness, how to, what if, when to, why you

Id: 54iCxIfjZYY

Length: 8min 28sec (508 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021