Madness of and Madness in "living"

 

Little Madness is Essential

Each small idea that is a bit off from general norms of normality is deemed mad. This choice may not be miraculous…but a definite creator of a little discomfort in the normalcy of everyday life. It may be a destination to dive into the ocean or a modest thought of waking up early in the morning - any slight change is madness in an occurrence at first sight. The conceiver and doer of that shifting idea are labeled mad and her/his act as madness.

Aristotle once said, No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness. When this young Indian girl, Arunima Sinha announced to the world her plans to climb Mount Everest with her artificial prosthetic leg, people called her crazy. They told her it is crazy to even have this dream. She was crazy and that craze of hers made her achieve the impossible.

Anything which is the first attempt in one’s family or society is madness. Still, the path of heroism invariably crosses the arena of madness… several times. A family of rickshaw pullers preparing for the IAS exam is craziness for the surrounding society till the person cracks it and then the same society honors them as heroes. A thin-looking person called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi who once sat on hunger strike demanding freedom for his country from its captors was laughed off by the world for employing nonviolent resistance. Later he was titled as the father of the nation for leading the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule and motivating several other movements across the world.

I once read this - Normal people read history, mad people create one. Normal people dream, mad people believe in their dream and work to make it come true. Normal people give excuses to not succeed, mad people excuse themselves from excuses. Normal people see obstacles to achieve their goal but mad people are so obsessed with their goal that they don't see anything else.

My recent mad idea has led me to run my first half marathon. I named this run “mad-run” because firstly, it was my first attempt to run for 21.1 kilometers, and secondly, it was a run in the heavy downpour for 2 hours 56 minutes. On that day water alone wasn't a deal-breaker…it was the lesser faith in my nerves and physical strength. Although I knew that my skin is waterproof and I will not melt in the rain, the target in mind was nerve-wracking. My record dwelt in front of my mind…that upon reaching 18 kilometers I have always given up the run. And that day, with heavy downpour and except myself and my running mate, there was no one around (besides one weirdo man maybe half-drunk), my first thought was - “I should head home”. And yet somehow the maddening thrill and excitement did not allow me to quit. I knew the drill of running. It was just the game of channelizing the mind's energy properly. There were no drumrolls or claps as I reached 21.1 kilometers but my inner mad-self was satisfied and gratified.

That crazy day is a major milestone in my life journey. A run to remember… forever!!

As the prince of paradox G.K. Chesterton once said- “Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed”, I am more determined to continue to be mad for living my life in a fuller sense.