Madness & Clarity
Either you have to be mad or you have to be completely clear, only then does the opinion of others never confuse you, that is why sometimes a clear person seems mad or a mad seems clear.
Adutya Dwivedi
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Be yourself, don't hide yourself by being politically correct. I understand the reason why most people often are not clear, and it is because they are afraid of others' reactions. But if you dare once to be just yourself, you will discover to your stupefaction that the others' reaction of the people (at least the most intelligent ones) is much more positive than the one you imagined. I'll give you two examples: people laugh about gay people who hide themselves. However, gay people who come out of the closet are much more accepted, and that is the reason they call their movement "pride". The second example I can give you is myself. I am not gay, but I have suffered for years from a mental illness, I am "mad" if you prefer Now I have almost totally recovered, and I can tell you that what helped me a lot here too was "to come out of the closet", i.e. to feel free to talk about my illness, I was not responsible for it.
1) I discovered that I was much less different from the others than I thought, which permitted me to correct my errors, due to my illness.
2) I suffered much less from the prejudices of the others (we call it stigma) when I was speaking frankly about my problems. Often the reaction was that people contradicted me but not in the way I thought they would! For instance, once I dared to tell something about myself to a psychiatrist, and I added that he would certainly consider me as "mad" and abnormal because of what I told him. To my stupefaction, he replied to me: But Yossi, many persons including me also suffer from this problem. What is abnormal with you is not that! It is the very fact you think you are abnormal! To sum up in one word: Be yourself!
I can give you another example of Madness and Clarity (Apart from the precedent: coming out of the closet). Often, it happens that a simple misunderstanding between two people degenerates into real hatred. How does it begin? By the fact, one person is afraid to be clear about this misunderstanding. Why? Do you think it's because he already hates the other? No! On the contrary! Because he is afraid of what will be the reaction of the other if he tells him clearly his opinion. An example: I was looking for exchanging French lessons for Arabic lessons. an Arab young man offered to give me lessons in Arabic. I was very excited. I wrote him several WhatsApp messages, telling him that I registered for an Arabic course, that I bought an Arabic keyboard, some books, etc. But I didn't receive any answer from him. In the past, I would have been afraid of asking him why he didn't answer, as I thought he would dislike this question. But in myself I would have deduced that he hated me because of my (whatever), that he was impolite, etc. This would have been the start of a difficult relationship in the best of cases. But I did the right thing: I told myself, perhaps (it is very improbable but maybe) he is impolite. In this case, I prefer to know it right now. Therefore, I wrote him a friendly message, asking him simply: why didn't you answer my messages? (I was completely clear) What do you think was his reaction? He recorded a long message telling me that he was looking for a new job and begged my pardon. In reaction, I told him that unemployment is a difficult situation and told him to forget me until he'd find a job. Let's be short: We became real friends!