Ain't it Great to be Crazy

I woke up this morning certifiably insane.  It was an hour before my alarm, and I was wide awake—and what’s more, I was happy about it.  I rolled out of bed and spent a good ten minutes dancing in front of my mirror in my underwear.  I sang songs, talked to myself, and laughed like a maniac.  I threw myself on my bed, curled up in the blankets, then rolled to the floor and pretended I was a dying bug.  Even now I feel that mad energy running through my bones.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so utterly delighted with life.

Happiness is insanity in this crazy, fucked-up world.  (Forgive my harsh language, but you have to admit that it’s true.)  In a world that has things like war, starvation, murder, rape, disease, slavery, treachery and so much worse—a world that is slowly dying from the poisons we have created, a world where our fellow man suffer in every second of every day—how is it possible to be happy?

But there it is.  Happiness is here, and sometimes it swoops down on us and grabs us up, and no matter what we do, no matter what we think about, we can’t change it.  That’s what happened to me this morning.  I woke up, and I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time, and I saw my red eyes and my mussed hair and my pudgy stomach and inflated thighs and I thought, how wonderfully beautiful I am.  How glorious it is to be alive.

This kind of crazy happiness is a gift.  I am so utterly grateful for it, so thankful that emotions can’t always be explained, that sometimes they just happen.  More than that, though, I am hopeful.  If we can have happiness in this crazy world, then maybe there’s enough good insanity out there to balance out the bad.  In the grip of my madness today, I can’t help but believe it.