It is commendable how we are able to maintain our sanity in today’s world. On the face of it, sanity itself seems elusive and something that we hopelessly dodge in an argument by saying, “Isn’t it just a perspective?”

Well, time and era wouldn’t be more fertile to talk about the germination of sanity in an individual’s life. There is an epidemic outburst of duality in society. If you don’t pretend, act, and accept what the norm is, you will be left to wonder for the rest of your life whether it was them or you—who was more foolish to have outcasted the other?

We consider ourselves too tiny and insignificant to be able to survive the multitude of conditionings, customs, and cultural pressures that the rest of the world around us is comfortable (or at least would like to believe) with.

Isn’t it more sensible to be part of something that everyone believes in rather than having to deal with it all by ourselves? This is one of Sophie’s choices we need to make, just that unlike in the novel, here one of the children is begotten and the other adopted from the mass at large!

There is a simple process that sets insanity into motion. Whether to establish a league of our own or be led by an already established one! The pressure is real, and the aftermath is devastating. With this, we also try to hold on to whatever little hope we can find in the otherwise doomed world around us. We make small, insignificant events seem larger than life and project them to reassure ourselves that life still has meaning!

It is indeed a talent to be able to strike a balance between facing our inner demons, not breaking down completely and starting to fight them, and not ignoring the entire mess and giving up in a hopeless moment.

For those who then decide to experiment with the choice of saving themselves from the rankling hot loo of the traditional blows, they eventually discover that sanity is not something that would be revealed by a heavenly intervention. Nor would it be disclosed as a godly gospel incised on stones. But it is a psychic legacy that each one of us gets as a gift for being a part of this magnificent expedition of evolution!

Ironically, medical science does not label individuals as insane but only as deviant from the set norm of the society they belong to. And also to the fact of his inability to lead a normal, healthy life in the said setting. This means that insanity is marked against the yardstick of societal norms, patterns, and notions of sanity! It leaves one wondering, in the loop of interrogation, who could it be—the individual or society—who is more insane?

PS: This is a two part post. The second part draws a line in the debate between Sanity and Maturity.