insanity
what do you think cause insanity? why do people go insane or mad? many would say that it is because one had too much stress, too much deep thinking, too much worries…. until one day something just snapped in her/his mind and s/he goes berserk.
last sunday while i was on a mini bus, i was so shocked when a mad lady came to sit beside me. she was an indian lady in her 50s maybe. she had disheveled hair and was wearing a night gown!… and was barefoot! at first when she sat down she turned to the 2 persons opposite her and kept disturbing them, asking questions and at times touching them. after those persons ignored her, she suddenly turned to me, touched my head and said “comel-nya!â€. i shrugged her off and gave her a fierce look. then luckily she did not bother me further. but oh boy was she noisy. she was was singing so loud all the while (in malay), and at times laughing out loud after her singing. i was so scared she would do something to me so all through the journey i kept on a fierce face. i hate it when the man in front of me, will once in a while looked at her and smiled. ayoh. like this, it will encourage her to shout and sing more lah! as for me, my fierce face was turned away from her all the time. since i’m sitting inside (window) and not out (aisle), i wouldn’t dare to get out and move away from her. if i’m sitting out, i will for sure move away from her at once.
i remember many years back, i was hit by a mad-man! really! but no fear, i was not hit hard and not injured in any way. just suffered from a great shock that was all. this mad man was walking towards me, and when he passed me, he suddenly cried out “give you a box!â€, and sure enough he boxed me on the right side of my head (near forehead). luckily it was not a hard box but sort of a brush only. nevertheless i was shocked. and because of that incident, from that time onwards, whenever i see a mad person walking towards me, i’ll try to avoid her/him, like crossing over the other side of the road.
once my aunty suffered a deep depression and had to be warded into the psychiatrist ward of a hospital. one day my mum asked me to tag along with her to visit my aunty. i was quite apprehensive visiting the psychiatrist ward as my imaginative mind was thinking of all the people there wailing and crying or going to beat me up, but i was surprised at what i encountered. read about it here, which was once published in the defunct ‘malaysian post’ magazine.
dale carnegie, the motivational guru, said in his book ‘how to win friends and influence people’, that the desire to being important is the deepest urge in any human being, and went to ask what caused insanity. i quote verbatim from his book:
what is the cause of insanity?
nobody can answer such a sweeping question as that, but we know that certain diseases, such as syphillis, break down and destroy the brain cells and result in insanity. in fact, about one half of all mental diseases can be attributed to such physical causes as brain lesions, alcohol, toxins and injuries. but the other half – and this is the appalling part of the story – the other half of the people who go insane apparently have nothing organically wrong with their brain cells. in post-mortem examinations, when their brain tissues are studied under the highest powered microscopes, they are found to be apparently just as healthy and yours and mine.
why do these people go insane?
i recently put that question to the head physician of one of our most important hospital for the insane. this doctor, who has received the highest honor and the most coveted awards for his knowledge of insanity, told me frankly that he didn’t know why people went insane. nobody knows for sure, but he did say that many people who go insane find in insanity a feeling of importance that they were unable to achieve in the world of reality.
then he told me this story:
“i have a patient right now whose marriage proved to be a tragedy. she wanted love, sexual gratification, children and social prestige but life blasted all her hopes. her husband didn’t love her. he refused even to eat with her, and forced her to serve his meals in his room upstairs. she had no children and no social standing. she went insane, and in her imagination, she divorced her husband and resumed her maiden name. she now believes she has married into the english aristocracy and she insists on being called ‘lady smith’.
and as for children, she imagine now that she has a new child every night. each time i call on her, she says ‘doctor, i had a baby last night’â€.
life once wrecked all her dream ships on the sharp rocks of reality; but in the sunny, fantastic isles of insanity, all her barkentines race into port with canvas billowing and with winds singing through the masts.
tragic? oh, i don’t know. her physician said to me, “if i could stretch out my hand and restore her sanity, i wouldn’t do it. she’s much happier as she is.â€
do you agree with dale carnegie when he said that as a group, insane people are happier than you and i. many enjoy being insane. why shouldn’t they? they have solved their problem. they will write you a check for a million dollars, give you a letter of introduction to the aga kahn. they have found in their dream world of their own creation the feeling of importance which they so deeply desired.
of course dale emphasied on the feeling of importance because that is what his book is about. true, insane people are happier than us ‘normal’ people but forget feeling of importance for a moment. why then do you think insane people are happier than us? for me i would simply said because they do not have any worries at all. there’s nothing for them to worry/think about. no worry, very happy, see? remember right in the beginning i mentioned that worrying too much makes people insane (one of the reason), so when they go insane, they have no worries. but then again, on saying they worry too much, therefore they goes insane and when they are insane, they have no worries, and i also feel we sane people worries, that’s why we are not insane……but then again there is a saying that goes ’99% of what we worries about never happens’, does that means we worries for nothing at all, and does that means we are already insane? huh? i’m confusing myself. is this a sign of insanity in me? better go before someone said i had a screw loose in my head.
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