A Crack in Sanity

Looked at one way, the process of changing from a 9-5 worker to a spiritual worker is the process of going crazy.

It’s not a bad metaphor—hearing things, seeing things, listening to currents and spirits, feeling things pass through you as if your body itself is a suggestion, going strange places and meeting people in bizarre coincidences that chain together into strange nights—none of this sounds particularly sane. Getting up in the middle of the night to light a candle and say a rosary, waking from a dream to write down instructions for the week because the voices tell you to (or more typically, straight import a block of instructions into your thoughts), it all sounds like crazy.

Conversely, everything about my office job strikes me as crazy, from getting up at an unmerciful time of the morning to jockeying for favor and unofficial uniforms because of compliance. Lunch time cliques, the sound of my bosses’ boss yelling at someone in the other room, hazard drills and people losing requests passive-aggressively because it’s the only way they can express anger without fear of getting fired… all a kind of infectious madness.

This is also (sort of) a choice. In my case, it’s a choice to stop denying some stuff, but it is a choice not to cling to a sanity which tells me that wearing dull colors and getting yelled at is a perfectly normal part of the day.

The crack widens, and as it does (and as I pay attention), the more I hear and the stranger I get. It is surprisingly joyful. A crack in the office, a crack in that sanity lets the light in.

I’m enjoying being crazy.