One of the favorite ways the students here have of talking about each other is to call them crazy. Most of them mean it in a good-natured way, no doubt, but as someone who has been intimately and personally familiar with mental illness for most of my life, I tend to shy away from making fun of the sanity of other people. After all, it is not generally very useful or beneficial for people who live in glass houses to start stone-throwing contests. And the fact that I believe everyone is genuinely crazy in their own way [1], but that most people are not very keen on admitting it or facing it or accepting it, also keeps me somewhat restrained, since there is no point in causing unnecessary hostility with others. There are enough necessary fights and unpleasantries one must have with others as it is.

I find it somewhat remarkable just how easy and how common it is to encounter the craziness of others. I imagine it must be similarly easy, if we are open and genuine people, for our own sensitivities to come to the awareness of others, even if the reasons for those sensitivities are not always clear for those of us whose waters run deeply. Being at least somewhat tolerant to the craziness and sensitivities of other people, I
am generally amused when I find out how other people are like. I would hope that other people are at least as amused if and when they find out how I work, which I have often been told is a somewhat difficult task. I find out that most people have generally very sensible and understandable reasons for their craziness and peculiar habits. I know that my own reasons for my own sensitivities are also rather straightforward and easy enough to understand for those who are willing.

But that brings up a larger and somewhat more uncomfortable question. Do we have the willingness to put up with the craziness of other people when they act themselves, or do we shun people when we find out what they truly are? Generally speaking, I get to know people with the expectation that if we know each other I will know their bad sides, and they will know mine. As long as they are struggling against the darkness within and around them, I am not going to condemn them or shun them, and I expect and require the same sort of respect and consideration myself, given the rather serious nature of the evil I have to deal with. Being a person who cares a great deal about reciprocity, that sort of problem is a serious one for me.

Of course, it is difficult to talk about the craziness of other people. People generally do not like to be known in such a fashion, especially not by random people on the internet. I am not the sort of person who is particularly private about the larger issues I deal with, and those who are curious can generally find out far more about me than they would ever want to know, but at the same time I respect and understand that others are not the same away and would want to tell people themselves (or not) about their own craziness. Just know that everyone has to deal with their own variety of craziness, so it behooves us to be at least somewhat sympathetic to the craziness that others offer.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/everyones-a-little-bit-crazy/