When you are young and carefree, craziness is a coveted characteristic, its makes you popular, its makes you hip and you can easily get away acting mad as a march hare - no one would bat an eyelid - but unfortunately not so if you are a day over 30, have a reasonably grownup job, are married or have kids - act crazy for the fun of it then and you are considered nutty as a fruitcake, sadly out of your tree and decidedly unhinged - people roll their eyes in sympathy and speak in hushed tones behind your back. You become the sad-one rather than so-the-one. And that is the dismal truth, once you are grown-up in the eyes of the world, you are expected to put your wild, wacky side safely in the closet and always say and do sensible things - and only peek into that closet once in the blue moon and that too only around people who know you very well and understand your craziness.
Relatively successful people as we know them, however never cared for being sensible - they are where they are because of their wild, wacky ideas and unwavering belief in themselves when the sane, sensible world told them otherwise. Among the well known, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and many others like them, never settled for the status quo, rather pursued their dreams relentlessly even when the odds were stacked heavily against them. Being a bit of a 'dog with a bone' crazy helped them, why can't it do the same for the rest of us?
But here I am advocating craziness, when the most I have come to being crazy is perhaps choosing an outrageous fabric colour, and that too for a bedroom which hardly anyone apart from family would have access to! (My husband and children may have more to add here about my crazy moments that I am totally oblivious to, of course ;). That said, I am purposefully trying to instill a little bit of craziness in my children - I want them to do what their heart dictates, be passionate about the things they do and never, ever give up on things they feel strongly about, not at least without giving it a fair try. They may not turn out to be the most successful people in life, but they will certainly be among the happiest.
Here is my all time favourite video from Apple about embracing your crazy.
