NUTS, NUTTIER, NUTTIEST (LIFE REALLY EXPLAINED)

First off, everybody is stark raving mad, no exceptions. You, me, the postman and the bee keeper, since to be sane in a mad world would drive one nuts swiftly. So there isn't a man, woman or child on thIs planet than isn't a lunatic of one sort or another. The great majority of us are fortunate enough that we can live with our insanity, keep it to ourselves as much as possible and come to some sort of accommodation with the world and function as well as we can. These are the "sane" ones. Blessed are those who can keep their oubursts to a minimum.

Others among us are considered "difficult" or "eccentric," meaning that our madness is quite obvious but not necessarily harmful. Irritating, maybe, but with so much madness in this word, irritating is acceptable. It's those poor souls who, either lacking some mental capacity to contain their madness or being possessed of an unusual abundance of honesty that the rest of label as "insane." We do this even though we know in our hearts that doing so is whistling past the graveyard. There but for the grace of God and all that.

The easy ones to deal with are the criminals. They harm other people so we put then in jail when we can catch them. We don't call them nuts either, but tell ourselves they are "bad," or in the case of some of them who commit especially heinous crimes, "evil." For lesser crimes, criminals can get to be considered good people who "made a mistake" and even these we people we lock up and put some very questionable people in charge of them. But at least criminals know the deal when they are caught. They're criminals, not idiots, but they do what they do in spite of the harsh penalties if they get caught, as most of them do eventually. That's pretty nuts.

Easier still to deal with are the artists and "geniuses" among us, that breed of human who is quite obviously "different." They channel their madness into creativity or ingenuity, giving the world breathtaking works of art, riveting performances or incredibly beneficial inventions and ideas. Their personal behavior can range from quirky to quite bizarre, but in recognition of the fact that we need such people, we live and let live and enjoy the fruits of their particular mania. Think how different life would be with no Michaelangelo, no Wright brothers, no Henry Ford, no Van Gogh, no Three Stooges, No Dickens, no Bronte, no Beatles or Sinatra or Bill Gates, or Jonas Salk or Maries Curie or Edison and Bell or Elvis or Deniro or Aretha or Einstein. Not that most of us would hang out with a lot of these high-strung maniacs, but we'll sure buy what they're selling and enjoy them no end.

Then there is that unfortunate few of us who have committed no crime at all except for being born human, the sort of human who is so honest that they cannot pretend everything is honky-dory with this crazy world. They rail against the accommodations the rest of us have made with this mass insanity, try to tear down the walls we have so carefully built and so zealously maintain. And we just can't have that. In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, these are the people we label insane in an effort to feel better about ourselves. We shun then them and mock them and lock them away for their crime of HIgh Honesty, which only proves how crazy the rest of us are too.

We invent jobs to explain their behavior, psychologists, psychiatrists and the like, and then fill those jobs with clueless lunatics who are in way over their heads. They can no more figure these people out than they can figure themselves out, which is to say, not at all. So we invent drugs to control the mentally imbalanced, calling them "medicine," and then congratulate ourselves on alleged "breakthroughs" made, overlooking the fact that when they stop taking the medicine the breakthrough evaporates. When you take medicine for the flu and you don't have the flu anymore, you stop taking it. The flu doesn't return and become a part of your life forever. The medicine cured it. So whatever it is they're giving to so-called insane people is not medicine, but prison in a pill, a behave-yourself-and-shut-the-hell-up-and-control-your-madness-like-the-rest-of-us solution. Some respond, most do not. It's not as simple as all that.

See, being openly insane is an embarrassment to the rest of us, a glaring reminder of our own deep madness we strive so mightily to conceal. Here we are, the only species on the planet with this affliction, and we take it out on the worst afflicted among us. That's nuts. You don't see giraffes or goldfish doing that. They pretty much go about their business of avoiding predators and nibbling food. Not us. We have "standards," you see, norms of accepted behavior that we earnestly enforce on others even though inside our own minds the storms rage and howl. When some of us bring this stark reality outside their own minds it makes us nuttier than usual and we label them, drug them or lock them away.

Flawed beings that we are, we take great pains to point out what we consider to be greater flaws in others. That doesn't make our own madness go away, just sort of mollifies our raging emotions and offers some modicum of self-jusification. Now, before you disagree with this argument, ask yourself how many times you have reflected that if others could read your mind they'd lock you up and weld the doors shut. Never? Liar! We all have this brain fever and we're all in this together. Our fears sometimes get the better of us and we lash out.

All that we can do, though, is to use our secret weapons, love and laughter, to fight the madness and to make this mad world at least a fun world. If we can laugh at ourselves and love one another, we can at least enjoy this world and appreciate that the madness is not our most dominating characteristic. Nature has provided us with plenty of gifts to offset this malady: love, kindness, compassion, logic, understanding and humor. Giraffes and goldfish don't have those either, only us. All we have is each other, for better or worse, so let's make the best of this crazy like and this mad, mad world. Live, love, laugh and celebrate.