How many times have you had the phrase "Are you mental?" emphatically thrown at you when you have done something out of the box? Indeed, our knee-jerk response to someone doing something jarring or unusual, even if it is to a positive end, is to call them crazy. Barking mad. Lunatic.
Somehow we have taken it upon ourselves to decide what is obsolete and what is significant in the world. Functionality is the basis of our judgement. If you are missing a limb and contributing to the society still, you will get some passing stares here and there. If you are missing, say, both legs, and you are wheelchair-bound, you will get sympathetic glances, pats on the back. If you are quadriplegic, you will have an ill-tempered nurse who may or may not be inclined towards listening to your sob stories at her leisure. The functionality of your body really determines if you are human, half-human, one-third of a human being, or just a piece of flesh to be passed by and ignored. And if you have lost the functionality of your mind, why then you are not human at all. If you are roaming the streets naked with your hair in a knot, you are to be ogled at and made fun of. If you are asked to identify yourself with such a person, you get uncomfortable. How can you possibly think of yourself as someone so dysfunctional, disarrayed? You are normal. Functioning. Working limbs, working mind.
What if you are the abnormal one to those whom you brand sub-normal? Can it be proven for a fact that the people who appear crazy to us because they do not adhere to our norms are simply in touch with a higher truth, or some facet of existence that we, with our "normal" intelligence, cannot comprehend? If the majority decides right and wrong, we must remember the Jewish children in the gas-chambers. We must not forget the old lady in the concentration camp sending out her last prayer. This is not a case of defence for the mentally disabled. This is not a case of defence for the physically challenged. And this is certainly not romanticising the same. This is not to tell you that the cuts on your wrists are beautiful or that your depression sets you apart and transforms you into a mysterious, mystifying creature. This is not what the quotation-pictures floating all over Facebook tell you.
This is an address to the disturbing tendency of mankind to dismiss all that does not conform to the norm or falls short of it. Inability does not render someone worthless, insignificant or in-human. Time and again, we have thrown an appalled "You need help!" to a loved one. Time and again we have heard people ask "Why should I go to a shrink; you think I'm crazy?" And we have comforted them by saying "It's juvenile of you to think that only crazy people go to psychiatrists!"
When will we start saying "It's okay to be crazy"? I am not suggesting that your schizophrenia is absolutely normal or that if you at times want to gouge your friend's eye out, it's okay for you to do so. This is simply to say that in spite of your craziness or with it, whether it is a slow decay like that of depression, the raving of bipolar swings, or the absolutely undignified craziness of roaming the streets naked and quarrelling with thin air, you are human. You deserve compassion. You deserve love. We were all born because we deserved love at one point or the other. This is not to say that you deserve special treatment. You deserve special care when you need it. You deserve to be treated uniquely when there is someone who thinks it appropriate to treat you that way. You are not less of a human being if you need help. You are not weak if you are sick. Compassion is your birth right. We need to live in a world where we can demand compassion from every pedestrian zooming past us. We need to live in such a world because we deserve it.
This is a reminder.
Remember, you are never weak.
You are wonderfully, painfully, so tenderly human.
You might be normal or you might be crazy, but neither makes you shameful.
Remember, you deserve love, very logically so.
You are never a vessel for mockery, and never, ever ridiculous.
Article by :- Shaoni Roy.
Somehow we have taken it upon ourselves to decide what is obsolete and what is significant in the world. Functionality is the basis of our judgement. If you are missing a limb and contributing to the society still, you will get some passing stares here and there. If you are missing, say, both legs, and you are wheelchair-bound, you will get sympathetic glances, pats on the back. If you are quadriplegic, you will have an ill-tempered nurse who may or may not be inclined towards listening to your sob stories at her leisure. The functionality of your body really determines if you are human, half-human, one-third of a human being, or just a piece of flesh to be passed by and ignored. And if you have lost the functionality of your mind, why then you are not human at all. If you are roaming the streets naked with your hair in a knot, you are to be ogled at and made fun of. If you are asked to identify yourself with such a person, you get uncomfortable. How can you possibly think of yourself as someone so dysfunctional, disarrayed? You are normal. Functioning. Working limbs, working mind.
What if you are the abnormal one to those whom you brand sub-normal? Can it be proven for a fact that the people who appear crazy to us because they do not adhere to our norms are simply in touch with a higher truth, or some facet of existence that we, with our "normal" intelligence, cannot comprehend? If the majority decides right and wrong, we must remember the Jewish children in the gas-chambers. We must not forget the old lady in the concentration camp sending out her last prayer. This is not a case of defence for the mentally disabled. This is not a case of defence for the physically challenged. And this is certainly not romanticising the same. This is not to tell you that the cuts on your wrists are beautiful or that your depression sets you apart and transforms you into a mysterious, mystifying creature. This is not what the quotation-pictures floating all over Facebook tell you.
This is an address to the disturbing tendency of mankind to dismiss all that does not conform to the norm or falls short of it. Inability does not render someone worthless, insignificant or in-human. Time and again, we have thrown an appalled "You need help!" to a loved one. Time and again we have heard people ask "Why should I go to a shrink; you think I'm crazy?" And we have comforted them by saying "It's juvenile of you to think that only crazy people go to psychiatrists!"
When will we start saying "It's okay to be crazy"? I am not suggesting that your schizophrenia is absolutely normal or that if you at times want to gouge your friend's eye out, it's okay for you to do so. This is simply to say that in spite of your craziness or with it, whether it is a slow decay like that of depression, the raving of bipolar swings, or the absolutely undignified craziness of roaming the streets naked and quarrelling with thin air, you are human. You deserve compassion. You deserve love. We were all born because we deserved love at one point or the other. This is not to say that you deserve special treatment. You deserve special care when you need it. You deserve to be treated uniquely when there is someone who thinks it appropriate to treat you that way. You are not less of a human being if you need help. You are not weak if you are sick. Compassion is your birth right. We need to live in a world where we can demand compassion from every pedestrian zooming past us. We need to live in such a world because we deserve it.
This is a reminder.
Remember, you are never weak.
You are wonderfully, painfully, so tenderly human.
You might be normal or you might be crazy, but neither makes you shameful.
Remember, you deserve love, very logically so.
You are never a vessel for mockery, and never, ever ridiculous.
Article by :- Shaoni Roy.
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