For most of us, our lives and life experiences follow a normally distributed pattern. We maintain the status quo and avoid shocks that rupture the veins and arteries of our existence! The convenience of the driven is preferred to the agitations and hassles of the chauffeur. However, within the population, there usually exists a small band of outliers, the 'abnormally distributed', who cause change. Their presence is as thunder and lightning! They are not like the masses.
These outliers, skewed to the left or right- (wo) men made of mad- turn the world upside down!
We behold these mad (wo)men and recline into self absorption or explode into bewildered exhilaration!
These (wo)men, made of mad, are disruptors. They stab the eSTABlishment and bring it to death. They leave an equilibrium position and create a new one; sometimes creating multiple equilibra. They go where they are not sent and cause us to follow.
These mad (wo)men are in our worship places, business spaces, schools and political spheres. Their convictions are like the balm that soothes or pepper in the eyes. They build monuments of glorious adulation or cause moments of human perfidy.
The ideas of these mad (wo)men are like nails, their conviction like the hammer. They smash through the glass that project our worldview and drive these nails through our consciousness.
I sat down and thought about these mad people and then it struck me: they were madE, before they became mad. They had a sense of self before going beyond self. They looked inwards before looking outwards.
Not everyone will go mad- it's reserved only for the few. Yet everyone who is made can be unmade and remade, not into a weapon or mass destruction, but first, self fulfilment and then if it is possible, mass erection.
I hope for a world of mad men like the man of 1517 in Wittenberg who looked upwards, inward then outwards!
Picture: @dana.vrazelova
© 2017, Emeka Akpa. All rights reserved
