Our favorite trails screamed out at us the other day. It was just a perfect afternoon and we both needed to escape the madness of what we were stuck in.
Technically speaking we should both have been taking care of business but sometimes you have to take care of your state of mind too. And we chose the latter.
We spotted an armadillo when we were just entering the reserve and it was so strange to find him out rummaging at that time of the day. We spotted the usual feathered characters along with a few baby gators hiding in the grass, trying to be invisible to those larger than they.
It was a lovely walk and once again, difficult to imagine a better day. As we finished, we even spotted an almost full moon hanging in the sky as a plane flew overhead.
I’ve put some images at the end of the blog and hopefully you get a chance to check them out.
It was the moon shot after we came away from the reserve that formed the thought for this blog. I reflected on why I am always drawn to the moon and even though I don’t howl at it, in my mind I have done so on a few desperate occasions.
The whole concept of lunacy obviously stems from a belief that the full moon caused certain strange behaviors in us humans and I can go along with that. The fact that I was born on a full moon is likely a root cause of my being so unhinged at times.
But it is really a behavior rather than a word that makes me think we are all lunatic to a certain degree. Each of us have had moments where logic has left the building and we have behaved in a way that would make us later question our sanity.
In the old days, they often used the word lunatic to describe what “they” considered aberrant behavior and sometimes took drastic steps (such as lobotomy) to “normalize” a person. Man’s cruelty knows no bounds and while we might shudder now at the thought of ever doing such a thing to anyone, we still use other mechanisms to deal with people that we consider abnormal.
We may socially isolate them, or judge them, deny them work, rights, or pleasure, all because they don’t behave in the way we consider normal. And yet, the definition of normal itself varies over time, over geography, and societal drift.
Being gay is not normal in many parts of the world. Or promiscuous, or a nudist, or a drifter, a non-conformist, a vegetarian, a non-believer.
In fact, those that judge and isolate tend to do it to anyone that doesn’t fit their version of cookie-cutter lifestyle.
These people tend to be quite vocal and when we allow these people to be entitled to run with their definitions of normal, laws get made, doors get closed, rights get stripped away.
One day we politely smile when some idiot is pro-life (but only for babies and not gun-shot victims) and then one day we wake up and some of those morons have passed a law that says a woman has no right to choose what happens to her body and an embryo is a child.
When we allow these imbeciles to redefine normal to the point where it is only their views that count, then those of us that believe in something different become abnormal and unacceptable.
That in itself is the real definition of lunacy.
… just a thought.
