But we don't call it 'crazy'. Other people's stuff might be crazy but ours is not. Ours makes sense. To us. Therefore, it makes sense to everyone, right? I know, you live with this person. Or you used to.
What I call 'brand of crazy' is humanity's way of dealing with and controlling the insanity we live with every day. And by insanity, I don't mean what we've created combining our brands of crazy. I mean the insanity of the unknown and uncontrollable: where did we come from, what will happen to us when we die, what is our purpose in the mean time, we could stroke out or get hit by a truck (or an asteroid) tomorrow. And the biggest one of all: Are we alone?
If we thought about this stuff all the time, we'd be raving lunatics. And by no means am I talking about folks with mental illness. That's some serious shit I have no real experience to draw on. I'm talking about we who've developed our own brand of crazy to deal with the insanity of this existence, so that it appears we've got some sense of control, that we have some knowledge of some kind rather than groping in the dark all the time.
We also engage in collective brands of crazy. Examples of brands of crazy that we share in common with others: religion, atheism, science, politics, philosophy, economics. Yes, even that beautiful human being the Dalai Lama engages in some brand of crazy. Gandhi. Jesus. Martin Luther King. And all those desert mothers and fathers and that great cloud of witnesses we call the saints. No one is immune because we all have our own point of view, our own judgment of what is crazy and what is not. What one persons thinks is nuts another might think is the way of salvation. Let your nut turn on that one for a minute.
Of course we will disagree. And so we have schisms, conflicts, wars, and violence on all scales, from domestic abuse to world war. As you well know, some of our brands of crazy are hurtful and destructive--we see no other way out of insanity than to annihilate others and ourselves.
But we don't just leave it at disagreeing; it's believing that my brand of crazy isn't crazy, that it's other people's brand of crazy that is at fault, that I could never be the way they are, they are evil incarnate, they are not human. And this is the worst brand of crazy of all: they are not human. From thence comes genocide, the Holocaust, terrorism, torture, unsafe working conditions, bullying, exclusion.
Which all stems from one of the craziest things of all time: fear. Everyone has this in their own brand of crazy. We're afraid of the unknown and the uncontrollable, deathly afraid. Really, how do you come to some sense of peace about that? How do you let go? Ergo, the Dalai Lama's brand of crazy.
Here are my top 10 of brands of crazy, in no particular order, subject to change on any given day:
- Papal infallibility.
- The United States Congress.
- Poverty.
- Extreme wealth.
- Addiction.
- Pornography and sex trafficking.
- Guns and other weapons of mass destruction.
- Racism, sexism, and any other kind of -ism (Ferris Buehler was right).
- Reality TV.
- Grass lawns (think about it...you have to mow it six months out of the year, all that pollution, gasoline, noise...what a waste).
And we self-medicate our crazy. Some of us have prescriptions that we need to cope with illness and the world around us. But the rest of us have our drug of choice as well: food, sex, drugs (including alcohol and nicotine), hoarding--all to varying degrees. We numb ourselves and our thoughts and emotions so we don't have to deal with ourselves and others all the time. This, too, is part of our brand of crazy.
Women and men have considered the other to be their own brand of crazy for a long time. Opposites of many kinds think the 'other' is the enemy, the one who needs to be controlled, the one at fault, in the wrong, who needs to apologize.
But we do find ways of living with all these brands of crazy. When we can accept and love someone not just despite but even because of their brand of crazy and share ours with them, we call that intimacy. When my brand of crazy gives your brand of crazy a second chance, or vice versa, we call that grace. And when we stop measuring others against our own brand of crazy, when we put ours aside and let another brand take center stage, when we forgive and are forgiven, when we forget to keep score, give others the benefit of the doubt--we come to the best brand of crazy of all: Love.
As our good friend Thoreau once said, "There is no remedy for Love but to love more." Love is the one brand of crazy we can indulge in, keep doing it, and maybe actually be able to come to that place of peace. Maybe even let go.
The Dalai Lama. Gandhi. Jesus. Dorothy Day. Hildegard of Bingen. Mother Teresa. Albert Einstein. Marie Curie. What a bunch of nuts. Thanks be to that nutjob God.
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