Sane Insanity
Some food for thought for the week ahead.
In Alain De Botton's introduction to The School of Life, he brought up the concept of Sane Insanity (p18):
"Basic sanity should be also be assumed to be beyond us. There are too many powerful reasons why we lack anything like an even keel. We have complex histories, we are heading towards the ultimate catastrophe, we are vulnerable to devastating losses, love will always leave us wanting, the gap between our hopes and our realities is always going to be unbridgeable. In the circumstances, it makes no sense to aim for sanity; we should fix instead on the goal of achieving a wise, knowledgeable and self-possessed relationship with our manifold insanities, or what can be termed 'sane insanity'.
What separates the sane insane from the simply insane is the honest, personable and accurate grasp they have on what is not entirely right with them. They may not be wholly balanced, but they don't have the additional folly of insisting on their normalcy. They can admit with good grace - and no particular loss of dignity - that they are naturally deeply peculiar at myriad points. They do not go out of their way to hide from us what they get up to in the night, in their sad moments, when anxiety strikes, or during attacks of envy. They can - at their best - be drily funny about the tragedy of being human. They lay bare the fears, doubts, longings, desires and habits that don't belong to the story we commonly tell ourselves about who we are.
The sane insane among us are not a special category of the mentally unwell; they represent the most evolved possibility for a mature human being."
In a way, becoming ‘sane insane’ pretty much sums up what I’m working towards. I recognise that every person comes with his/her own set of imperfections and unique circumstances - myself included (there is no objective ‘normal’). Through non-judgmental, curious introspection I’m able to have a more accurate grasp of my so-called insanities; with lots of patience and a little help from my friends I do my best to evolve into a more ‘sane’ version of me.
