Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Someone does something which I call “strange”, such as dancing by himself in the broad expanse of a train station.  What song of freedom is blessing his sweeping arms?  What’s transparent to him that’s opaque to me?  Perhaps at this moment in my life, I don’t have the ears to hear the sweet melody.  And that’s okay.  I can still smile in the presence of a free human being.

Maybe, though, I won’t smile.  Maybe I’ll conclude that there’s a drunk in front of me, swirling and twirling just before stumbling to the floor.  A philosopher named Ken Wilber talked about the “pre/trans fallacy”, in which another’s behaviour appears to be deficient, even pathological.  But it may in fact be something above normal, something that reaches for the stars rather than puddling in the gutter.

Could it be that some of us see connections that are invisible to others?  See through a self-imposed roof to the glory of sunshine?  Say “What if?” and “Why not?” rather than languishing in “the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.”

I don’t want to “regress to the mean”, as in having my life get ever closer to the mediocrity – the vanilla – of “average”.  I want to fly across the dance floor, drinking in both the applause and frowns of onlookers.  I want to feel the praise and blame falling off me to the floor.  They’re both imposters after all.  I yearn for the real thing.