The Bungled and the Botched...

I spent some time yesterday thinking about all the great minds and creative thinkers and I began to count the number of them that had tormented and dark lives (a good number of which are consider to be "mad" near the end of their lives). I thought of Van Gogh and Nietzsche, Freud and Beethoven and many others. Why are all of these people who did so much for us (whether you think they were right or wrong they did change our perception of the world) suffer so much? Did they change the world inspite of their conditions or were they made by them? Was it some kind of cosmic balance that gave them brilliant minds and made them see things differently but inturn took from them what was owed for these gifts? Was God punishing them for trying to figure out a world without God? Is it just the fate of all humans to suffer and struggle through this world? Is there a limit to what the human mind can do and if you try to push that limit does it end in madness? I once tried to "question everything" and took it very literally and for my efforts I had a complete breakdown that I still don't believe I have recovered from. I don't know what I was thinking... if someone with the calibre of mind as Nietzsche was driven to madness by questioning too much what could I accomplish but a trip to the madhouse. Now I mush admit I was mad to begin with but it took me somewhere I hadn't been before and don't want to go again. I WON'T question everything again. Somethings are just too big. I did learn something about myself though and perhaps about everyone. Before I thought that I was a normal person (yeah I know) who just had some mental health issuses and if I didn't have them I would be able to do the things that everyone else seems to do with ease. Mail a letter, pay a bill, get gas ect. Now I realize that I am not a normal person with some problems, I am bungled and botched, I AM my mental illnesses. Without the bungled and the botched there is nothing. We struggle against our problems and imperfections but I have learned I have to try and work with my problems and accept them to have any kind of harmony. For me a certain amount of planning mixed with a little medication/therapy and a large dash of perspective help me to be me. It is an on going recipe that I can never perfect but if I work at it I can learn to be happy again. I will leave you with a few quotes:

“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
— Oscar Wilde

Nietzsche once said, “A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.”

Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."

"Perspective may be the only thing that can save a man of genius from himself"