TheBanyanTree: Crazy on Planes

[Woofie]

Yup and me too!!!:)

We humans tend to be rubberneckers. We just can't help slowing down when 
driving past an accident or staring up at someone threatening to jump off a 
building. Someone having a meltdown in public? Wow! Free entertainment! I 
think in this sort of situation, we forget the objects we are witnessing are 
actually human beings like us. We tend to divorce ourselves from them and 
relegate them to objects and thus they are rendered as spectacles for our 
entertainment.

The Romans were much more civilised than us - they used to provide lions and 
folks to fight them  and other gory acts as a regular entertainment slot in 
everyday life. This allowed folks to rubberneck legitimately and sated their 
needs for blood and violence.

Actually I can't understand why one of the TV production companies  has not 
brought back Bedlam as one of those reality series thingies...instead of 
watching some stupid show  starring a mob of exhibitionist farting around in 
some house, how about one inside a mental hospital?;) It would provide 
rivetting viewing;)

W:)






-- 

Best regards,

Woofie mailto:woofie at woofess.com



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-----Original Message----- 
From: Sally Larwood
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 7:36 AM
To: A comfortable place to meet other people and exchange your 
own*original*writings.
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: Crazy on Planes

Me too!

Sal

Sent from my iPad

On 12/03/2012, at 9:21 AM, B Drummond <redd_clay at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> Bravo, Monique.  If you were on a stage, at this point I would be on my 
> feet, clapping, and shouting, "Bravo!".
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Mar 11, 2012, at 5:18 PM, Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>
>> Yesterday’s cursory review of the news was full of mental illness 
>> stories.
>> If by full, I mean there were several. There were also the old standbys:
>> War, famine, the economy, politics, but there were also stories of people
>> lost in their own minds.
>>
>>
>> There was a video of a flight attendant losing it on a plane, before the
>> plane was in the air. I clicked on the video, and watched several minutes
>> of passengers holding up cell phones to capture the activity and the
>> screaming as the flight attendant was restrained in the front of the 
>> plane.
>> The passengers were avid to capture anything on their cell phones that 
>> they
>> could, and occasionally they’d comment on what was going on. Also,
>> occasionally, they’d laugh, as if something particularly amusing was
>> happening.
>>
>>
>> Because there’s nothing funnier than witnessing a person losing their 
>> mind.
>> I use the term “losing her mind” loosely, because I don’t know if she 
>> was,
>> I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know what will happen to her. I 
>> do
>> know, having witnessed such breaks myself, that for the person that it’s
>> happening to, it’s pretty damn horrible. It’s frightening, it’s scary, 
>> and
>> when it happens one can’t really imagine any other reality than the one
>> that is happening right then, at that time, in that space. It is their
>> reality, whether it bears any relation to reality as the rest of us would
>> define it.
>>
>> We are a wonderfully compassionate people.
>>
>>
>> We’re certain that sort of thing won’t happen to us because, after all,
>> WE’RE not crazy. It only happens to crazies. Only other people. Is that 
>> why
>> some of us laugh? Because we’re so safe in our own reality that we don’t
>> need to consider those in pain as people just like us?
>>
>> Sometimes when I’m in an uncomfortable situation I’ll laugh. If I’m 
>> nervous
>> it relieves the tension, or it’s a nervous habit, or it’s one of the ways 
>> I
>> cope with pain. Stew and I often laughed about his mental illness, but we
>> were in the thick of it, not watching from a distance.
>>
>>
>> I don’t know why people laugh when someone else is in obvious pain. That’s
>> what mental illness is, after all – it’s pain, and because it affects who
>> we are, how we act, what we do, it scares us. It should scare us. it’s a
>> scary thing. But it’s scariest for the person experiencing it, that much
>> I’m sure of, as certain as I am that one should never end a sentence with 
>> a
>> preposition.
>>
>>
>> I’d like to say we shouldn’t laugh at people in pain, but then I’d be
>> accused of telling people how to act, and I don’t have that right. That’s
>> true. But I would like to know why we laugh. As someone who has looked 
>> out
>> over the precipice, I can’t imagine having the certainty that I would 
>> never
>> have a loss of mental health. Maybe I’m missing something because of my
>> brain chemistry (and here someone will tell me that there’s no such 
>> thing,
>> but they can believe what they want and I’ll believe what I want), and
>> maybe if I had that absolute certainty that crazy people are always 
>> someone
>> else, then I  would understand.
>>
>>
>> As long as I’m on the subject, as much as we pity the mentally ill and 
>> tell
>> ourselves we’re not like that, why do so many then want to characterize
>> themselves as crazy? We try to  one-up each other with stories of how our
>> family and friends are crazier than your family and friends . . . Maybe
>> crazy is cool? As long as it doesn’t manifest itself as seeing things 
>> that
>> aren’t there, magical thinking, major depressive episodes, mania, 
>> paranoia,
>> psychosis . . .
>>
>>
>> We want to be crazy, but in a good way. But with crazy, you don’t get to
>> choose, do you?
>>
>>
>> Should I ever have occasion to suspect I may become psychotic, I shall 
>> send
>> out notices in advance in the hopes that everyone will gather round and
>> capture the moment with their smart phones. So there’d be proof, because
>> what fun is it being crazy if you can’t prove you really went there?
>>
>>
>> It’s like having your passport stamped when you’ve been to a country you
>> didn’t really want to visit, but did anyway.
>>
>>
>> Do make sure I have your contact info on hand. You’d hate to miss it.
>>
>>
>> Monique
>