You are not mad
As I sat discussing my Dad's dementia with a friend who runs a care home I noticed his daughter paying a little more attention than I would expect from a 23 year old. In the conversation I had mentioned my favourite Krishnamurti quote which anyone reading my blogs will have seen many times before. She asked if I could repeat it and so I obliged
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
I could see her whole body lighten as she digested the quote, as if she had heard expressed what she had always felt. This beautiful young woman had tried to take her own life last year as she struggled to make sense of a linear world. A gifted artist she experiences her world in a unique tapestry of sensory stimuli. As an example, when struggling to decide on which college to attend she locked herself in her room for days emerging only when she had made her choice. Her decision making process included a matrix of string from which she had hung items which she felt seminal in her life. She now works with teenage girls excluded from school and too difficult for their parents to manage. Something in her processing gives her access to their issues.
She is not mad. She doesn't require normalisation, or to describe it more accurately desensitisation. She just needs the world to accommodate her exquisite sensitivity. And the good news is that is exactly what's happening right now.
Another beautiful demonstration of the supposedly mad being the only sane person in the room was the wonderfully brave self portrait by Chris Packham in the documentary Apserger's and Me. If you are in the UK check it out on i-Player. I wept as I recognised so many of his challenges in navigating "normal" behaviour and social norms. Do architects have any idea how painful asymmetrical windows can be to the sensitive? (Skip the scenes of the ABA training if you have any idea of who these kids really are.) Chris is a successful television presenter and manages his Autism by living alone in the New Forest. His partner of ten years has learned not to be offended when he describes his dog as the only love he really trusts.
Chris Packham doesn't need curing. He doesn't require normalisation, or to describe it more accurately desensitisation. He just needs the world to accommodate his exquisite sensitivity (a point he makes in the documentary). And the good news is that is exactly what's happening right now.
For too long the sensitives, neurologically atypical or however you wish to describe them/us have been asked to conform to societal norms which are little short of barbaric. They have been asked to explain the unexplainable. They have felt unconditionally where most simply emote.
Well something is shifting. If you are sensitive you can feel it. No more apologies to appease third dimensional structures. No more explaining irrational motivations such as love. No more reverting to the mean.
The meek are about to inherit the Earth and to do that the Earth will have to shift as well. Its not just the humans! I was enjoying the beauty on display in the spectacular Blue Planet 2 series when it dawned on me how brutal this planet can be. A vicious game of survival where violence is everywhere. This planet must be a distortion (if a beautiful one). As the frequency of the Earth raises the universal law of the strong giving to the weak will return and once more the lion will sleep with the lamb.
The truth is that it has been too easy to feel like you are going mad when your own sensitivities leave you reeling at the behaviours and expectations of a crazy world. Rest assured you are not mad, you were just a little early and your time has finally arrived.
Lots of love and life
Bill