The Mad Mad Race…

Next Day a driver reports for duty, after performing long gruesome duty last night, he asks for a short distance trip. He was denied the same. The driver walks away, boards an empty bus and just zooms it away, he drives on the wrong way, kills around eight innocent people, damages countless number of private & government vehicles, the police gives him a chase. His madness stopped only when he was stucked up in a snarling traffic jam in a narrow street.

After inquiry, it was found that the normal looking man, who performed his duties well for last twelve long years suffered from psychiatric problems, he was undergoing treatment which he left halfway down. This real incident happened some 10-12 days before at Pune, near Mumbai. The incident was first of its kind on this side of the planet, we hear about such cases quite often in the west, stories of mindless people going on shooting spree, killing hapless people. In one case i remember a shooter killing school kids in school. This forces me to think, are we all not, ticking human time bombs, waiting to explode ???

Sometimes, i feel, we all are mad !! the degree to qualify may vary, which in turn gives us a label of being a normal sane person. But somewhere deep down, we all are insane. Some mad after achieving some goals, some mad for gaining more and more richness, some mad for other worldly pleasures, some to please their egos. But mad, we all are, to some extent. We wisely cover our madness and label it as career oriented, upward mobility and other fantastic terms. But the madness is the same. Sorry, if somebody feels offended, mad that i am 🙂

Yes, a bit of  madness is required, but it should be to a certain extent.  This madness made Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein. This madness made Newton, a Newton.  Your Madness should be your motivating factor,  it should not be a depressing one.

We all carry a loads of anxiety, worries,  frustrations with us.  The world may see a very clean, sauve, sombre face of us, but beneath the mask lies real us. Modern life, and the demands of it, have only worsened the story. Has’nt it ? We all are running an endless mad mad race, a race which has no end, race to achieve targets, race to earn more, earn more for our better future, better future at the cost of losing our present.

Has this recklessness and stress not resulted in increased incidents of heart troubles in our youth. Youths in their prime are dying of sudden heart attack. Leaving behind their uncherished and unfulfilled dreams of a better tomorrow. Some fifteen twenty years ago the deaths of youngsters due to heart ailments were unheard of, surely these twenty years gap coincides with the liberalization of economy that government has undertaken. The situation becomes even more critical in developing country like ours, without much backup systems, the public health system is in disarray, the psychological health of a person is never even given a passing thought. Like in the case of the reckless driver above, the organization, a huge public transport organization accepted that they had no systems in place to check the mental fitness of their employees. Coupled with the fact that people find it very unacceptable to visit a psychologist. A belief most people carry is that only mentally unstable people need to see them.

Life has become more stressful, we don’t get time for ourselves, time to sit for a while, time to pause, enjoy smaller joys of life. I remember one gentlemen travelling in our train compartment quite often. He was a hefty gentleman, well dressed in formals with tie and would stand somewhere, and would travel very silently, but all of a sudden he would start talking to himself and it seemed that he was undergoing some very huge level of stress in his office, he would talk about office, targets, would plead apology to boss, and would talk in a way as if he is in conversation with someone. If a fellow traveller, touched him or asked him what was wrong, he would again get normal, but only for a while.

Are such people not a ticking bomb. For they carry with them their world, world that is not so rosy after all…

So be mad my friend, but, be mad for good and do press that Pause button for a while.