Sanity in an Insane World
Cordura en un mundo insensato
A question about feeling confused and out of place when surrounded by polarized reactions to the news, and what it means to stay sane in a world that seems to have lost its mind.
Sanity in an Insane World
A question about feeling confused and out of place when surrounded by polarized reactions to the news, and what it means to stay sane in a world that seems to have lost its mind.
Usually I don't look at the news, but right now it doesn't matter whether I look or not. Everyone is talking about everything. It's so polarized, and everyone is on some side. For me, it's not that I don't want to look at it. It's more about what I'm looking at when I do. It makes me feel so many sensations, mostly sadness and a kind of disappointment with humanity. It makes me wonder what I'm even doing here.
With everyone talking about everything, I find myself more curious about what people are processing, not about what side they're picking, but what is happening inside them when they hold that position. Sometimes I feel like I don't understand anything.
Right now you're talking about peace, and it's moving my peace. I'm losing sleep because I don't understand, and I want to understand. But when I meditate, or when I'm practicing, many thoughts pop into my mind around all the news and everything that's happening. I get so confused sometimes, and I don't like that.
Now that I'm listening to you: I don't avoid it. I just watch it. But I don't engage with it. And when I express that to others, when I feel open enough to share my position, sometimes I feel a little embarrassed because I don't actually understand the full picture. Sometimes people take it as if I don't care. But it's not about caring. It's that I don't find the sense behind all that mess, and when I can't find the sense, I just stop putting my attention on it. I stop trying. Does that make sense?
It makes a lot more sense than you can imagine.
The question that matters
I think the most important thing you asked is: what am I doing here? That is not for me to answer. But I can speak about that question. I can speak to the question, not the answer.
There is something significant in why you're here, and what you're speaking about makes so much sense to me. To me, you're speaking sanity in a world that is insane. But because the world is insane, you look insane. You might subjectively find yourself full of self-doubt, or have a sense of not belonging, of not fitting in, of not being able to function in the normal ways that are expected.
In a world where everyone is insane, the sane have a hard time.
A rare and significant thing
There is a spectrum of sanity and insanity. But the fact that you are in this group, even if it were some other person leading it, is a really strange thing. By strange, I mean it's very rare, very unusual. What brings you to this is so rare and so unusual that it's very significant.
I trust that there is something very significant here. And what I'm hearing in your struggle to verbalize your experience is simply sanity.
The healthy cell
If any direction can be offered for what you might be here for, consider this: there is sanity being born in a world of insanity. There is an organism full of cancer that is spreading, and there is a healthy cell. A cell that has been able to remain healthy, that has been able to defend itself from the insanity being bombarded into it, the chemicals and madness being pushed into it. It has been able to protect itself and remain sane in that chemistry, in that environment of madness. That is a very significant thing.
What you do with your life is your life, and it's up to you. I wish you the best.
It feels like it's based on feeling to define what insanity is.
We define a tree as a tree, and we call it a tree. Obviously, what I'm calling insanity is a personal opinion. You could disagree, and I'm not going to debate it, because it is a personal opinion. But to me, it's insanity.
To a point, calling it insanity implies a reaction to something. "Insanity" is a negative word, as though something bad is happening.