“No great GENIUS has ever existed without a touch of MADNESS.”
Aristotle’s words are a comfort to those among us whom have often wondered if we were slowly going MAD.
God knows I have. Often. You?
In this piece I am not referring to the word MADNESS as a substitute descriptor for anger. I am writing about that fine line some of us know only too well. That fine line between GENIUS and MADNESS.
Often when we are on the verge of a breakthrough in our lives we can feel a touch of MADNESS haunting us. I remember often asking my therapist in the early years of my recovery if he thought I might be MAD.
He reassured me that MAD people generally do not question their sanity. I did not know that. I so desperately hoped back in 1995 to one day to feel and be normal. Fast forward a few decades and these days I could not think of anything worse, conforming or pretending for approval or normality. No thanks.
Some of us spend our lives emotionally medicating, editing our authentic selves and conforming in order to feel and be accepted as “normal.” Now this kind of long-term pretence can most definitely send us quietly insane while keeping up external appearances.
Those who dare to individuate and follow their inner GENIUS are very often called by the “normal” people MAD.
“Are you going MAD?”
“Are you for real? It will not work” … etc. etc. etc.
If you have not yet seen the powerful movie The Imitation Game, can I suggest you do yourself a favour? In this amazing bittersweet, true story, the lead character Alan Turing, is played flawlessly by Benedict Cumberbatch, who is anything but a normal character. To some he is labelled as quite MAD along with many other unkind insults. Thank God characters like Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Virginia Woolf, Steve Jobs, Marie Curie (all true GENIUSES in my view) found the strength to follow their inner GENIUS that initially often seems like MADNESS to those around them.
What I have come to believe after many years of working on my own issues and with others from all walks of life from celebrities, elite athletes, in jails, rehabs and psych wards, is that a normal life is quite an abnormal occurrence.
Actually I have never met a normal person I must confess.
My therapist told me when I first commenced unpacking what I thought of my shamefully strange emotional baggage begging him to heal me and transform me into a normal person.
He said to me with gentle warmth and respectful humour …
“Normal is only an accurate description for explaining cycles on a washing machine, it doesn’t exist in human lives, Cynthia, there is no such thing.”
What a relief it was for me to hear the truth about the ever elusive state of normal.
So I invite you to reflect with an open, kinder heart next time we find ourselves using the word MADNESS disrespectfully towards ourselves or anyone else.
I love Albert Einstein’s take on GENIUS and MADNESS …
“Everybody is a GENIUS. But if you judge a goldfish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”
Lotsa love Cynthia xxx
© Copyright 2016 Cynthia J. Morton Emotional Fitness™
