Sanity

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

                                              Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

_____________________________________________

It strikes me

As I walk the dirt roads

In this charmed valley 4000 feet up

And miles from anywhere

that we humans are pretty clueless, dare I say insane?

people struggling with addiction have a pretty simple definition of insane

“Insanity is continuing to do what you are doing, and expecting a different result”

I think the majority of people fall into that destructive loop

Doubling down on dysfunction

Making it worse and worse

We can see from history that responding to violence with violence

Begets more violence

But we still promote violence (war) as a solution to problems

We can see from the research that more guns equal more death

And that people in houses with guns are more likely to die of a gunshot

Than are people in houses without guns (kept for safety)

But we continue to insist that guns keep us safe

We have profound evidence that our climate is changing

and that much of the change is caused by humans

yet many (for reasons that make no sense) continue to insist it can’t be true

We have millions who following the lead

Of the one who would be king, think

Neglecting the poor

Pampering the rich

Imprisoning kids

Oppressing minorities

Will somehow make for a great America

Even though history has shown that the downfall of every great nation

Has its genesis in injustice, inequity, and oppression

It almost seems as if the “majority” is the ranks of the insane

The normal are not detectably sane

It seems we may be addicted to the worst parts of ourselves

Yet we all go around playing “sane”

Smiling and saying we are “fine”

(Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional)

How do we find sanity in insane places?

How do we keep from being sucked into the vortex

How we keep from being spun about by the gyre

As it whirls, ever widening until the “center cannot hold” (Yeats)

And our hearts, our lives, our world explodes?

Perhaps the only escape is inward

Down into the deep regions of our being

Where we are who we truly are

And where sacred dwells

Unnoticed, neglected,

Lurking in the dark

Waiting for us to return

Perhaps sanity is only found when

We become intimate, bound together closely in love

With ourselves

And become intimate, as intimate as with a lover

With the Sacred

Perhaps in that intimacy

Sanity is to be found

And perhaps in finding a fragile sanity

In this insane place we call the world

We can find our voices

Our hearts

Our compassion

Our generosity

Perhaps then we can spit into the wind

Shout into the chaos

And insanely believe

Along with Buddha, and Jesus, and Gandhi,

And Martin Luther King Jr

Crazy people all,

We can make a difference