Aspects of Being
Judgement is often an immediate response and an inevitably easy route when we are challenged to understand the actions of others (or even of our selves!). Yet whenever we chose to practice it, several aspects of our capacities and potential are left by the wayside and die a small death; namely empathy, understanding, compassion, and imagination... Perhaps all of these can be deemed "Insight", and while it isn't necessarily a permanent death, it can easily come to be if repeatedly embraced. And despite the lure, it does not lead to a peaceful heart. There are many things we designate as 'crazy' around us in this Life as opposed to our individual safe havens of Normal. A person who attempts to take their own life when completely and utterly overwhelmed by unending dire and hopeless circumstances is seen as unbalanced. Yet a person who possesses a seemingly Ideal Life is encouraged to forfeit it to be killed by strangers in wartime. In some countries mercy is granted to The Suffering where they may legally choose to end an otherwise interminable, unfathomable (UNfathomable!) pain. In other parts, hopeless cases wither in spirit, kept on any and all means of "life-support". Which one of these is crazy? In one microcosm, a friend of mine who does volunteer work with psychiatric patients recently commented to me that he is forever bewildered at how many people on 'the outside' have just as many quirks and problems as those whom he works with. I replied that I've rather always felt that each of us possess our own brand of 'craziness' - we simply execute it differently (and some 'fake it' better than others). Truly, we all have our own personal motivations for how we react to Life, whether it's seen as positive or counter-productive... Perhaps "crazy" is as normal as one can be at a given time - look to someone who is grief-stricken, or at another who is desperately at the end of their proverbial rope. Both are 'afflicted'. Both react wildly, seemingly bereft of reason. Yet one will command compassion, and the other will likely be "certified". Of course, these are but two examples of those who feel that choice has been taken away from them. There is a world of examples outside of us. Yet what of we the onlookers... Perhaps it is Paradox that we despise more than anything, for it forces us to reevaluate the comfortable and convenient rhetoric we've adopted as Truth... ~ The opposite of an
incorrect statement is a correct statement; the opposite of a profound
truth is another profound truth... (Author Unknown)
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