MENTAL HEALTH……WHAT’S YOUR FREAK?

The other day I was having lunch with a friend who has OCD as he sat there and  sanitized his hands 20 times,  he goes ”God I wish I could just be normal like everybody else.”

It made me laugh, and choke on my Iced latte a bit. He was like “what?”…

I said “look over there, see that dude…he is purposefully making sure all of his food does not touch the other foods on his plate, and eating them in alphabetical order.

See that woman across the street, she is having a five minute conversation with her dog, and that business man in the suit that just walked by, the one that looked like he had it all together. Well he was counting all the cracks on the sidewalk and making sure he didn’t touch anything or anybody else in morbid fear of catching something they might have.

 

So define normal? Seriously is there anybody out there on the face of this earth who is 100 percent completely normal? In all honesty I don’t think we have a concept of what normal is because if nobody is normal we having nothing to compare insanity to.

In one of my favorite books “A new Earth” by Eckhart Toll he basically breaks it down, that the more intelligent man becomes, and the more he progresses in all areas of life..music,literature, art, technology, the more insane he becomes.

At the core of most ancient religions you will see that their philosophies are on the same page. They seem to all agree that the so called “normal” state of mind for most humans contains a strong element of dysfunction and madness.

 

In Hinduism, it is called “maya” the veil of delusion. Ramana Maharshi said it bluntly when he said.,”the mind is maya.”

Buddah says the human mind in it’s ”normal” state generates “dukkha” which means suffering, unsatisfactoriness, and plain misery. He said wherever you go, whatever you do, you will encounter “dukkha”, and it will manefist itself in your life sooner or later.

This makes total sense to me..it’s like a big pool of the Canterbury Tales..what started as perhaps a virus in the human soul, has grown into one giant malegnent mass of

             Gluttony

             Greed

             Laziness

             Wrath

             Envy

             Lust

             Pride                   

I think back to when I was a growing up, where there were no IPhones, blackberrys, Skyping, etc. People were not so frantic, and stressed, and popping prozac like jellybeans, and having nervous breakdowns. Oh sure there was dysfunction, but not nearly as much as there is today. I think if you go back each generation you will see that mankind was not nearly as messed up emotionally as we are today.  I truly believe the world had their problems, but I think everybody was a little happier.

Our success, our new inventions, our new gadgets, programs, and progress, is making us slowly go mad.

As we move forward in the future, we all move further on in our connection to the earth. We have to find ways to deal, so we develop ticks, and quirks, and unfortunately sometimes addictions.  We don’t really stop and smell the flowers anymore, instead we tweet, spend hours on Facebook, and watch other people lives disintegrate on television.

I can only imagine what life was like in the 1800′s. I seriously don’t think people were capping each other for churned butter, or suing one another for stealing an idea about growing corn.

I think that a lot of people, myself included, are genetically born with a chemical imbalance in our brains, or lack of serotonin so to speak. This has a lot to do with why we have OCD, Bipolar ,Depression, Eating Disorders, etc. I honestly think we are all born with a little marble missing. Some of us just have more marbles then others and this is why we have so many treatment  centers, pharmaceutical companies, and Celebrity Rehab.

 

I think if you are on medications to control your quirks, go to a therapist to talk about your mother, and take yoga 6 times a week, you are more normal then anybody, because you are owning your crazy..you are talking about your freak..you are proud to be a little insane.

Some people may feel like a nut, and some people may not, but I promise you the ones who do have a lot more fun.

 

Don’t ever think you are different, or be ashamed for having an addiction, a mental illness, or a little left then right field behaviors.

I am proud to say I am totally borderline cuckoo for cocoa puffs, and that I live on another planet.

I dance in my underwear, I tear tags off clothes with my teeth, I have to have my favorite eye mask or I won’t got to bed, I talk to myself, and still interrupt the entire conversation. I do things in even numbers, and rock out to my radio inside my car.

 

I do a million other things that are beyond normal, just ask my friends. And they do a million crazy things as well, believe me.

As long as you are not being destructive to yourself, or hurting other people, I believe you should own your quirks and be proud to say you are not normal.

So whatever your “freak is” be proud of it, and don’t let anybody else steal your whack.

 I think Susanna Kaysen hit the nail on the head in the movie “Girl Interrupted“ when she said, “The only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.”