Am I or are the Others Crazy?

I am sure that at some point in our lives we have all asked ourselves, Am I crazy?Such a difficult question to answer, and probably most people would just say; of course not and give an excuse. However, not many have stopped to think what does this word really mean. Does it mean to be mentally incapable or does it mean to challenge ingrained ideas in society? As Joshua Walters said in his TedTalk “On being just crazy enough” it depends on where you fall on the spectrum.

Imagine that you are a curious mind who lived in the late 1500s, and you are passionate about the universe and its complexity. After a lot of research, you conclude that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets and raised the possibility that these planets could even foster a life of their own. You decide to present your idea to the public, however, you are taken as a crazy person and sentenced to death. This is what happened to Giordano Bruno an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorists. Simply because he defied the Catholic church beliefs he was burnt to death. He was classified as “crazy”.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? Albert Einstein one of, if not the brightest mind of the 20th century had entertained this question. What does this say about our society? , when the genius, the greatest minds of all times feel like they are crazy. I am not saying that there aren’t any mental illnesses or that everyone is sane. But that often times we as a society disregard an idea for fear that it will shatter all our current ingrained beliefs. Perhaps being a bit crazy is not such a bad idea, being able to escape the cave society has kept us in and explore the unknown.

To open our minds, remove the blindness and to question everything, that’s the type of crazy we should all experience. If society is incapable of change, of “craziness” then we will never be anything more than what we are, we will never be more than what our minds restrain us to be, we will never be more than what society allows us to be. Only those who can break the chains and knock down the walls will be fully free. Only those who will fight for truth and light will ever be complete. The rest will forever remain in the darkness of their cave.