Last week I walked past someone who was clearly in a mad spell. He loitered outside a shop, standing in place but spinning around and around, oblivious to the world around him. The man was just doing his own thing, and wasn't bothering anybody. He's my people, I thought to myself.
It reminded me of the time a woman spent the bus journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh muttering loudly to herself and glaring at everyone around her, clearly pissed off with humanity at large. She's my people, I had thought to myself.
Or the time the man approached me and my friend Alasdair and asked us a slew of nonsensical questions, for which no answer could be found to satisfy him, until he gave up on our idiocy and moved on along the pavement. He's my people. And what about the time the man visited my workplace, claiming to have discovered a cure for multiple sclerosis? My people.
Once upon a time I would have felt uncomfortable in the presence of these people, not understanding the state they were in. But since I've been in that state myself, I've come to understand the sacred beauty of these mad spells. My experience taught me that madness is a window to the divine. Madness reflects the absurdity of the human condition, and the vulnerability of us all. In a spell of madness, one revels in the ineffible nature of ourselves and our world. Even the angry woman on the bus had something profound to offer: what a bunch of dicks we can all be, she seemed to say. How badly we can let ourselves down.
In his 2016 book The Spiritual Gift of Madness, Seth Farber sets out the following proposal:
It is my contention that the future – the new order – is breaking through the boundaries of the present social order under the guise of madness, of “psychosis.” It is breaking through in the psyche of the mad person. What we call madness is not a sickness; it is the future itself seeking to be born, to be incarnated in the “real world.”
I agree with him wholeheartedly on this point – but differ in his concern that the movement he pictures must have messianic leaders. If we're going to birth a new order, we all need to participate together to bring it into being, without the trappings of leadership and hierarchy. I believe the new order will be organised around community, rather than leadership. It will be organised around the personal and the intimate, rather than around large-scale public policy.
So last night I found myself among my people: in a small group outing, with friends from the Mad Studies course. I felt really privileged to be there, and accepted in a way that I've rarely felt in groups, in my outsider-ish life. It wasn't without conflict, because human foibles trip us up even in the smallest of communities. And it wasn't without anger, because emotion lies at the heart of every conflict. But there was an acceptance of we-are-who-we-are, along with a degree of vulnerability: who we are isn't all that simple. Who we are takes time and effort to understand, and even then there will be layers and dimensions (five, I'm told) to consider in each one of us.
But what about this: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead) Does a night at the pub with a group of my fellow mad folk do anything to change the world? I would say yes. The biggest changes can turn on the smallest of details. We never know the impact we have or the wheels that may begin turning on the back of a single exchange. Our internal lives reflect the universal concerns around being accepted and cared for, so finding friends in others does indeed shake up the universe. Communities are created one connection at a time.
Am I even making sense? I don't know; but in any case, I raise my glass to my companions and to the fine evening spent in their company. Cheers to my people.
Photo by Christine Jou on Unsplash