Often people ask how can a true
human being retain his sanity in this mad mad world? Whenever I hear such a question I doubt whether the question
is merely a rhetorical expression of a
confused mind or a statement made unthinkingly just to make a conversation move directionless into
abstractions. For who is a true being. And
how is this zillions year old world mad? If the world is created to grow and
move along time's uncharted course with
a purpose to reach a definite goal, the mater is different. But if this is a
'mad mad' world how could a 'being' decipher the mad elements being a part of
it for some time- say a hundred or less or more years? If a being fails to
retain his sanity is the world at fault or the so called being fails to
come to terms with his reality which in any case is a partial perception of the
totality as the being's movements both physical and mental, are spatio-temporally
limited. One may call this hair-splitting. But is it not true that sanity is an inner accord of all inborn
qualities ? A man is born with a body ( machine) which is operated by mind and
heart: The other parts are built around them to function in a rational manner .
If man is a rational animal his
rationality is shaped and formed by nature- society and the unseen
unpredictable happenings which shock man to ponder the energies impalpably
present in the world of eye and ear. A rational man is never stuck at any
point. His perceptions are seldom synecdochic. He may generalise on particulars but does not particularize although to
" Particularize is the alone mark of distinction" as William Blake opined.
All particularities and generalities are sorted out by human observation and
these observations are the components of a rational view of the world. This is
human sanity.
What is insanity then ? When a
person fails to assimilate and analyse the insanitary events and things , the
incongruous and unfamiliar things into a meaningful whole related to life and
experience he gets stuck at a point of incomprehension. His mind fails to
control the psychosomatic system. His words, actions, movements become erratic
and out of sync with what we call normal
rational behaviour. We call such persons insane, mad and lunatic. A man who
fails to win the love of a woman at times goes 'mad'. People laugh at him and
say - see what a fool this man is ! There are
so many woman in the world if one
ditches you, you ditch ten, well, the lover is a rare specimen. He finds his
world, purpose and meaning of life in one woman. He cannot find substitutes for
his love does not compromise or settle for less. Would you call him mad,
insane? Was Hamlet mad? I would have
called Hamlet mad, had he eloped with Ophelia. Insanity is at times a
poetic frenzy where the world seems to
be too small before his love. What will you call Harry and Meghan who have
forsaken royalty to seek out their own identities? They are saner than the
others. Diana was insane for she moved out of the charmed world of royalty to
seek forbidden pleasures.
There are exceptional people who
relinquish power and the mundane luxuries to find out their society. They have
the right to ask the question with which I have begun this piece. Was Alexander
Fleming insane to work in a ramshackle openwindowed room to save wounded
soldiers? Insanity has different connotations. We have clinical insanity where
the mind has congenital defects or induced defects because of a weak nervous
system. But where the mind searches for ways and means of changing the state
and fate of man and behaves abnormally we have to pause and think before
calling them mad. Einstein, Nietzsche, Romeo, Dr Schwitzer and Newton were all mad to keep humanity sane .
Some politicians like Vajpayee, Churchill, Mao Tse Deng were mad to change the society and put man on
a higher order. Rousseau, Lincoln and Marx were mad but their madness was Super-rational. They thought not of
themselves but of the rest of humanity. The creative
artists is always irrational and insane for they follow a different
order of nature to change the society
for the good of man.
Sanity is a balance of contrarian
values proportionately harmonized to avoid extremes either way. They never try
to reach the moon, never spend sleepless nights imagining heavenly grace with
their beloveds. They are homeopathic men and women who worry how to get more from petty lives. They never
dream of giving things in word or deed. They generalize like idiots to
particularize and hold he value aloft as
a beacon for man is not in their mind or heart. The genius is often called
insane but how true and beautiful is that insanity which gives a turn to the
drab routine of history!
