Clarity

    Clarity, a gift and a burden, freedom and prison, wings and shackles. To see the world with clarity can be a beauteous experience. It can also feel like an assault on raw nerves. I see the insanities of those around me, those who are unwilling to admit that they are anything but sane and normal. Is this an easy route to calm? An easy path to feeling sane, despite incontrovertible evidence of crazed behaviors and eruptions of psychotic breaks? I see it happening to others. I see their crazy hiding just beneath the surface like demon possession waiting for the watchful priest to succumb to sleep. Yes, I keep my lunacies on a tight leash as best I can, but I am cognizant of their presence, aware of the warning signs, watchful for the early schisms that can forewarn a pending episode. I watch, carefully, and act accordingly. I possess the clarity of inner vision, insight, awareness that allows me predict impending erratic behavior and shelter myself and others. Does this make me sane? Or does Clarity lie at the heart of an episode? To see what goes on around me, see what others willfully ignore, see the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem. To be unable to turn a blind eye, it is an assault on my senses, on my sensibilities. And so I watch with horrified fascination, the crazed actions and reactions of others, the downward spirals that I am unable to rectify, unable to mend, unable to halt. In their deluded insanities they are unwilling to accept even the slightest aid, not only unwilling but made hostile by even a hint of assistance. What can I do against odds like these? Nothing. Nothing at all, except to try and protect myself from the eventual backlash, explosion, implosion, psychotic break. But Clarity and Empathy make protection impossible. I will feel the angst, bitterness, pain, hostility, blame, apathy, inertia, feel it all down to my marrow. The best I can hope for is to be solidly grounded enough that it will wash around me like foamy surf, and not knock me off my feet to tumble in the waves, nostrils full of sand and sea water.
    The gift of Clarity makes my world multidimensional, every sense alive to input and stimulation. I taste.touch.smell.feel.see the world with Xray vision, penetrating beneath the surfaces to see inner beauty, radiant life, spirits coalesced and intermingled. I taste the sky, breath in the glory of trees, see the life force of earth, feel the air like a lover's caress. If I open my heart and eyes to my life I am filled to overflowing with the grandiosity, love, warmth. If I can withstand the barrage, hold myself upright and strong, absorb the perfection until I can hold no more, then be allowed to retreat and assimilate. That is the key, selective assimilation, the ability to retreat and process, a chance to let my overworked nerves rest and be at peace.
    Gift or Burden? I choose Gift, the other is the price I pay to live life with eyes wide open, senses honed and vibrant. Is is sanity or insanity? Are my lunacies the result of Clarity? Or is my ability to manage my Lunacies, lessen the carnage, protect those I love, because I see deeply into my own soul? Cause and effect? I do not know, I may never know. What I do know it that Clarity and Empathy are cornerstones of my foundation, my nature, they are a huge part of who I am. For better or worse, Clarity is mine, forever.