On Sanity

What exactly does it take to be normal anyway? I don't know why but I find it very difficult to conceive of a person who in the eyes of the world can be considered exactly sane. For instance, consider the following simple thought experiment: lock a 'sane' person in a dark room with no possible exit for five hours on end, he himself in possession of the knowledge of his captivity. Now what would that person be doing, I wonder! He could not possibly strut about the room looking for exits, for he must have tested beforehand that there aren't anyway. In fact it would be rather loony on his part to strut about a dark room for nothing. He could of course try to amuse himself by talking or singing or such, but that wouldn't be what a normal person would do now, would he - I mean talking to himself or singing out loud all by himself? Then again assuming he would have nothing to do with any of that, what then? All he'd do would be then sit there like a goddamn statue, but normal people do not sit around like statues for five hours, do they? He'd have to be a yogi or an imbecile to be able to do that. hence we draw the following conclusions:

a) You could not possibly lock a normal person in a dark room for five hours on end, or
b) Psychological 'normalcy' is a line in the spectrum of sanity - that is, it has no width. As such, do what you might, you're either under or over.

Now, the first argument we reject, for there is no reason to believe that a perfectly normal person shall be a particularly strong person, in fact, quite the contrary. Thus we are left with the second, reductio ad absurdum. This is what I have a problem with. If all the people on this goddamn earth are either subnormal or over-normal, why exactly is it that the population is largely concentrated within such a narrow bandwidth, just slightly below the normalcy line, in the sanity spectrum? Why can't people accept their craziness for what it is? But no, they simply would not put up with this fact. Or worse, they would have their own brand of craziness which they would support with all their might and anyone with some sort of innovations on this theme would be duly crushed!
Now as far as I am concerned, I do not regret my life or stuff that I have done (or most of them), for a thing is to be considered right if you think it is the right thing at the time of doing it, and I know my mind. And I do not complain, even though I'm cursed with the premonition that I will end my days in a lunatic asylum, simply for the crime of endorsing a different brand of lunacy. But I do feel that one should be allowed to fixedly stare at the ceiling with a stupid grin on his face without uttering a word while in company for quite as long as he likes. And it is excruciating sometimes when you're walking the streets all alone and somebody comes up to you and asks you, "where do you go?" Why is it that every road we take must lead to a definite destination, or even have an end? Why do we bother so much about the results rather than the method?
So I guess if you were to call me insane, I would merely take it as a tribute to the great human species, of which I am an integral part. And I would really thank people to base their actions on method rather than the end result, for success is a matter of mere statistical probability, the method is all you could possibly alter. This is the only way of having any chance of finding happiness assured for yourself, as I see it.

Yours sincerely,
Jude

[P.s. Writing at 5:30 in the morning after lying awake the whole night is kinda taxing on the mind and as such, even I have no great love for this particular post. If you consider this to be a blot on the page, I shall oblige you with its immediate removal. But then this is a weird time, when certain rarely explored nooks and crannies of your mind suddenly fall apart and you get glimpse of certain stuff about things that you normally choose to ignore. And my original motive behind this page was to simply jot down whatever comes to the mind and this way it serves its purpose. Aesthetics
are only secondary.]