A Dose of Madness...

 

“Mad people will one day rule the world."

How crazy does that sound? Do you think I am irrational about saying this? I don’t think so.

According to the dictionary, madness is the state of having a serious mental illness. Or as some say, an extremely foolish behavior. In that case, a mad person is simply one with serious mental illness, or maybe just a person who portrays extremely foolish behaviors.

Well, that’s the dictionary. I think madness is a state of mind enlightened. Which simply means that a mad person is one who sees something that everyone else can’t see.

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

― Rob Siltanen

 

What it simply means when I say that mad people will one day rule the world is that the few brave people who are willing to do what others are afraid to do, not because it’s impossible but because it’s not normal, will one day rule the world with their inventions and ideas, and they will forever leave a mark that everyone else will follow as a benchmark.

Please be mad.

The state in which we live in nowadays is so wanting. For instance, the education system is based on how well one can do in an examination. If you ask me, that is pretty unfair, because at the end of the day you don’t need to understand whatever you were taught, you just need to be good enough to remember how to answer exam questions and you are okay. You go through a system with so many disciplines, both useful and useless. You end up spending 17 years of your life cramming and practicing how to answer questions. Students struggle to impress society with exceptional grades and forget that it’s never about the grades, it’s always about the quality of content in one’s head.

“I told my son: you don’t need to be in the top three in your class. Being in the middle is fine, so long as your grades aren’t too bad. Only this kind of person [a middle-of-the-road student] has enough free time to learn other skills.” Jack Ma- CEO alibaba group

Religion also needs madness. So many people are into religion, and so many of them get lost because they are sheep and don’t want to ask questions. Religion is beautiful and allows us to know ourselves more. To know who we are, what we are supposed to be, and the big picture of life, but many religious teachers and leaders mislead their followers because nobody is crazy enough to see the big picture.

The Bible is there to lead us. The Bible bares all the answers and all the instructions for life. Some of us are just too lazy to read the Bible and seek interpretation. Instead, we wait for the man of God to do all the work for us. A lot of us are too scared to ask questions about the Bible just because you are too normalized and afraid to look crazy or sound mad.

A mad person will see the truth, and a normal person will take him/her to a mental hospital, hoping to normalize them.

“You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.” Swami Vivekananda

Leadership and governance need madness. You always need to open your third eye to be able to see the actual face of that leader, to understand the direction that the leader is leading you to, and to understand why you are going through something. It takes a mad person to understand that your happiness depends on you solely, and that can only happen if you are mad enough to see the truth.

In a mad world, only the mad are sane.

“Strong government doesn't mean simply military power or an efficient intelligence apparatus. Instead, it should mean effective, fair administration - in other words, "good governance.'”

Raghuram Rajan-Economist

Enough case points. What am I really heading for here?

I am not schmoozing about society or the entire country and giving opinions on education, religion, and governance. I want us to talk about us.

Why aren’t you great yet? 90% of us, at the beginning of every year, sit down with a pen and a piece of paper in our hands, busy writing about resolutions. We always want to be. We desire to be. We have all those long lists of do’s and don’ts, plans and structure.

“I want to have an impressive body.”

“I want to get a promotion at work.”

“I want to save for at least 2 vacations this year; one domestic and the other international.”

“I want to start my own business.”

“I want to write a book, or start a podcast.”

“I want to find love.”

“I want to sharpen my leadership skills to be the best leader.”

What’s stopping you?

All those who want are always great, but the problem is that they are just wants.

What is a want really? A want is just a desire for something. Do you really want the year to end with all your beautiful desires just on paper?

Honestly, wanting is not enough. For you to be the best at what you are doing, you ought to stop wanting. If you want to make something, achieve something, break records, make history… you have to stop wanting.

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

― Rob Siltanen

Mahatma Gandhi, Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Koitalel Arap Samoei, Mekatilili Wa Menza (mother of colonial resistance), Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi, Field Marshal Musa Mwariama, and General Waruhiu Itote (General China), all these are familiar names in history.

They were all influential leaders in the world. They left a mark that has never been forgotten. Do you know why? They never wanted. They had a stronger urge to do it, and they did what they did, like their lives depended on it... and it did.

Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Cristiano Ronaldo, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Michael Phelps, Mohamed Ali, and Eliud Kipchoge. Any of these names sound familiar? These crazy human beings never just wanted to be the greatest sports people. They never sat down and wrote a wish list that they would be too lazy to work on.

“No human is limited” Eliud Kipchoge- Athlete

We need to stop wanting and start needing. We don’t just get things in life; what we want to have must change to what we need to have in order for us to achieve greatness. We need to stop sleeping on the mad person inside us. Sanity is madness put to good use. We need to stop limiting how much our brains work.

What is the actual need, really? Maybe you want to know lol.

A need is simply a circumstance in which something is necessary.

Nobody starts a year by wanting to breathe; we all need to breathe.

Nobody goes to sleep wanting to wake up the next morning. Everyone needs to wake up and chase their dreams. The same enthusiasm we put into things that happen naturally is what we need to put into the things that happen in our lives.

Let your madness lead you.

Every single morning you wake up cursing that job you are preparing to go to. That’s fine. You are normal. All the mad people quit their jobs to follow their dreams since they saw something others didn’t.

Have you ever wondered how life would have been without technology? Do you ever wonder what the guys back at Google, Connoisseur, and Microsoft do all day?

Someone invented a software that allows you to communicate with a partner 1000 km away from you using audiovisual. Right now, that mad person controls your privacy plus a lot of wealth and power.

There was a time when mobile phone invention in Kenya had not taken flight and only a few people understood what it was. Some thought it was a work of the devil, some thought it was an invention for the super-rich, and right now, the mobile phone is one of the most popular modes of communication after face-to-face meetings.

It only took a mad person to see that the future needed for the world to be reduced into a global village and not a vast universe with billions of people and no way to know what is going on, on the other side.

I am not writing just to give you a brief history lesson.

I am the doctor that is here to infect you with a dose of madness.

You need to see beyond the desk you are seated on. You need to see beyond the unhappy life you are living every day. To take a leap, you need to be crazy. You need to be a certified mad person to make that breakthrough. Enough with the resolution paper work.

You have to need something enough to do what the normal person can’t see. Normal is boring. Honestly, what is life without an enigma? But don’t forget, only a mad person causes an enigma. You snooze, you lose.

“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom from loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”