Don’t we all have our share of madness? I think so… Some of the madness is so common that we think it is the norm… And some we hide though it is so OK… we hide it because we find it uncommon… We have this urge to gel in with the crowd.. to blend into what the world expects of us… to conform…. But I think we should give way for our madness…
I say this under the assumption that I am not giving as much as i want.. I know many people who say I am a bit too off mark… for thinking the way I think and for doing what I do… I remember once someone who studied with me tell in a crowd “Vinod did not have any problem while in college but look what has happened to him now..” And he did not say this in anyway to demean me.. but he was also not joking… he was genuinely concerned about me and did not subscribe to me riding my mad train… This was around 15 years back…
So one person thinks I was normal in college and a nonconformist now.. But there is a different version I have heard as well…
One was a lecturer in college who asked me straight on my face after I met him a few years later.. He asked if I was ok.. I asked him why did he think I was not and he said..”I know you had some mental issues while in college…” he named another lecturer who had supposedly told him so… I smiled and said I am ok.. My existence in college it self was a sign of abnormality for some I guess…. I did not try to correct him on the mental illness part… I thought correcting was the worst I can do… Who am I to decide what they think is normal….
Then years later another professor from college seems to have mentioned to a common acquaintance that I was much better that while in college and a changed person now… not the wreck I was back then… anymore….. So people all have different versions of us in their minds… and how we changed.. and these can be way opposite…
I am the same person back then and now… yes there are things that might have changed… And even when I changed there was a set of people who thought I changed for the worse… So a few years back I realized there is no point controlling the madness…. just be it…. you don’t need to conform to anything….
We will always find people who will give their opinion of what scale of OK you are in… as long as you don’t give a shit to it… you can move on…. We all have a streak of madness and it is important to let that happen freely so that we can be complete… not shades of what we are…. the full us….
People will always attribute your nonconformity to something that is a result of their limiting imagination.. you don’t live in their imagination… we live in the real world….
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Categories: Enjoying Life and Work, Life, Life and Happiness
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