A Regal Bedlamite Made Me Question What Sanity Really Was

Is Insanity How We Truly Define It Or What We Have Been Led To Believe?

What if madness is the nirvana that we all seek, and the lunatics we see on the floor believe they are frolicking through Mother Nature, but then we see them walking aimlessly and naked through the concrete jungle that we built because of our greed; what if they are enjoying the earth the way it’s supposed to be, but in reality, it’s not matching their lives? What if sanity is just us breaking and fighting each other, you know, in the name of growth, success, and capitalism, and madness is how life is supposed to be before the fruit was eaten? Sometimes I want to believe; who is rather sane, us or them?

I’ve always wondered whether the life we are living isn’t even the way we are supposed to live it. All this talk of existence and living, and having everything all figured out; what if life is supposed to be lived weirdly and not routinely, and the unpredictability of being here and just doing is what life is supposed to be? Sometimes I feel like structure helps, you know. Structure brings normalcy, but is normal really what life is about? I mean, come to think of it, people who enjoy life, people who create, are often seen as eccentric or mostly insane. People who create, innovate, build the best things in life, and have created beauty in arts, culture, and fashion are often called either geniuses or madmen.

And speaking of madmen, I was on my way to work one time. I was stressed out. I was thinking, “ Wow, is this how life is really going to be?” I was going through it; I had deadlines to meet, was stuck in traffic, a bit of road rage, and had a lot going on in my head. And I got to a traffic stop, and I looked to my left. In my car, I saw one of the most regal things that I’ve ever seen in my life, and it hit me because it was out of nowhere, and it wasn’t something that you would think of when you hear the word “regal”.

I saw a bedlamite, a madman in modern society’s vocabulary, just seated most gracefully. I wish I could have taken a picture. I really wanted to take a picture or a video, but I was just in awe of this man seated gracefully. He was seated at the top of a set of stairs, half naked, tattered pants, tattered shorts actually, with a trash bag beside him, his leg crossed, one arm in the air, the other just sifting through the things in the trash bag. He had this graceful air around him, which was a direct contrast to how I was seated in the car, and it got me thinking, if people are to look at this man and look at me, who would be seen as the sane person? Because here I am, breaking a sweat in the car, just angry at the world for the little things that were happening to me, and this man that the world would perceive as a madman, just graceful.

It got me thinking, what really is insanity? I mean, sometimes you see madmen, naked, dirty, just walking around, doing God knows what, and then sometimes you get to see this picture, and the first thing that hits you is, what is insanity? Because sometimes we joke, “I’m going insane, this is stressful, this is this”, but what about them? Are they going through stress? Things like these make you wonder, “Did their creativity and their thirst for existence and living drive them to the edge that they’ve now reached Nirvana? Have madmen achieved true enlightenment?” Because they appear not to be in a rush, they are happy wherever they are; there’s this sort of inner peace, even in their filth. The so-called normals are out here being deranged, extremely primal, and doing God knows what. These circumstances show the contrast in how they live and how we live.

I mean, there’s a sort of grace about us as well. Some people are not insane or going through what we call life who emanate grace, majesty through contentment, and the simplicity of agriculture, literature, familial leadership, arts, and salvation. However, the everyday man who’s bustling and hustling and going through the cycle of life, waking up at dawn, thinking of sustenance, deadlines, and what to bring to the table by dusk. Lonely people moulding their lives in hopes of finding their companions. These people are stuck in a loop of insanity. What’s worse is that they don’t know, or even understand, why we are going through it.

Again, what is insanity? Because as I watched the regal bedlamite in my state then, I could see this huge contrast in regality and grace, and it made me question who was the insane one between the two of us. The picture I saw and the picture of myself were too different to understand what insanity truly is.

What if society is leading us astray? What if our minds are trapped in a nasty simulation? What if the people who have gotten out of this world simulation are the madmen and are the ones living the life the way it’s supposed to be? What if the reality of this world does not coincide with the people who have gotten out? What if human beings have driven this world insane and made it so dirty that the people who are out of the simulation are not in tune with it? What if Earth were supposed to be so beautiful that, when you achieved true enlightenment, you just rolled around in its beauty and splendor, and human beings, tasked as its stewards, had destroyed it? What if we were to be in nature, grass, beauty, and spring? What if the dirty waters that they are bathing in were to be beautiful canals and streams, but humanity has ruined them with chemicals, dirt, filth, and plastic? We, the ones who are assumed to be sane, are destroying the Earth, and the mad ones are the ones bearing the repercussions?

It’s quite mind-boggling when you look at it through that lens because Earth should be beautiful. We are supposed to make it beautiful, and we’ve ruined it. We are destroying it in the name of greed, but we euphemise the destruction and call it capitalism and revolution. What is it about us?

So again I ask, what is insanity? I’m not talking about violent mental health disorders. I’m talking about the ones roaming the streets, just walking around and enjoying Mother Earth. Are they really out of the simulation? Are we still stuck in the matrix? Are we ruining the Earth in this instance? Ruining our mental, physical, and spiritual health and the Earth concurrently? Because a madman does not complain about mental health, we do. What if that madman is living a life better than ours and the world just hasn’t met him yet?

I don’t know—some food for thought.