BY SOFO ARCHON

Krishnamurti once said that “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” However, being born and brought up in such a society, most people don’t realize that it is sick, let alone that they are part of this sickness, just like fish, which, living in water, don’t realize that they are in it and part of the sea life.

What does it mean to live a normal life? In today’s world, it means to be brainwashed at a very young age for over a decade by what we call schooling, to later on work as a wage slave and compete with others for almost the rest of your life so as to merely be able to pay bills and survive, to consume products without end because manipulative advertising convinced you to while you unconsciously harm the planet you inhabit and that sustains you, to slowly poison your body with disease-causing foods, to obey the rules and blindly follow the dogmas that were forced upon you by authority figures, to be passive and uncreative, suppressing yourself in countless ways, living in suffering yet doing nothing to overcome it.

If you stop for a moment and think, you might realize that this kind of living is absolutely sick, yet it is accepted by nearly everyone as healthy, and it’s even rewarded by society. In fact, those of us who are better at living this way, are considered to be more successful, whereas those who desire to create a different, more meaningful and fulfilling path in life, are ridiculed and looked down upon, being considered as stupid, weird, or even crazy.

But what is the point of living this way? Life can be lived so much better — we can live playfully, filled with laughter, love, and creativity, at peace with ourselves and others, savoring the gifts of existence. Unfortunately, only a few people manage to escape from the matrix they’ve been unconsciously living in since the day they were born. Those are the rebellious ones who at some point in their lives dared to think outside the mental box that society has provided them with and break the shackles of social conditioning.

Rebelling against normalcy

To rebel against the normalcy of society is the most difficult thing you can do because you need the guts to be honest with yourself and others. To voice the truth in a world filled with deception, is tremendously risky because it means going against the current of tradition, which in turn means confronting the crowd mentality and going through immense hardship because of that.

There have been many people who had the courage to rebel against the normalcy of our sick society, but most of them couldn’t deal with the negative consequences their actions had on themselves. When nobody embraces your uniqueness and is able to understand you, and when everybody is trying to suppress you and make you fit back into society, it is easy to lose courage, and not uncommon to experience immense psychological anguish. That’s why some of the greatest minds to have ever walked the earth suffered from serious psychological disorders. And although now, a long time after passing away, they’re recognized as geniuses, when alive they were considered weirdos or lunatics by the majority.

Once you realize how sick the way most of us are living is, and openly go against it, trying to reclaim your freedom and create your own path in life, you are bound to get in trouble. People, including family members and friends, will likely do everything to put obstacles on your path with the intention to “help” you become “normal” again, exactly like they are. Instead of helping you to grow your wings of consciousness and leave behind what is burdening your psyche, they’ll do their best to cut them off, to make you crawl by their side and suffer together.

Dare to be “crazy”

Your inner voice has been telling you for a very long time that life could be lived much more beautifully, and you should trust it because it’s right. And although that might be the most difficult thing to achieve, it is the only thing worth working for, because, again, what is the point of living otherwise? What is the point of wasting your entire life, just because others told you that’s how you are supposed to live?

If you wish to live in your own way, and not the way others expect you to live, you need to gather some courage in your heart to be a little “crazy”. You need to distance yourself from the comfort of the herd and follow your calling, without caring much about what others think of you. You need to be willing to go through tremendous hardship, without giving up trying to turn your dreams into reality.

Remember: No matter how much suffering you might experience from walking the path of non-conformity, the advantages of doing so far outweigh the disadvantages. Just like a mother experiences tremendous pain while giving birth, you are experiencing immense pain birthing a new kind of life. A life of beauty, of joy, of celebration. Pain goes hand in hand with change, so embrace it, allow it to guide you and let it be a catalyst for your inner metamorphosis.