preview

The Mind Is Not Sane

Better Essays

The mind is not sane. People use the adjective sane as a fabricated reason to not only judge, but also to define the “self”. Sanity is in the eye of the beholder. It could be used to describe one’s self or others. It is an artificial construction, created by society, that has taken over society’s lives for both better and worse. In the readings, “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday” by Martha Stout and “Wisdom” by Robert Thuman, both authors would arrive at an agreement that the mind creates ideas and scenarios, which circle around the idea of the self’s “sanity”. This idea or myth of sanity transforms society’s way of life; the extent of it being truly a myth can only be defined by an individual’s self. Everyone will have their …show more content…

(Thurman 471). When the mind is changing constantly, the idea of sanity is altered as well. These constant changes in life make it difficult for people to come up with definite responses and reactions. This is because some things that are thought to be instinctive or automatically understood, can be hard to spell out when people do not realize that they might not have understood as much as they thought. Especially, when trauma occurs, those memories of a certain past time “changes the brain itself” (Stout 656). When this happens some individuals may feel a sense of unawareness or separation from the real world. This separation from the present world could cause people to feel insane or broken, however, it is just the mind overthinking and playing tricks on the self.
The ability to be aware is all about having the perception and knowledge of the world around oneself. The mind has powerful moments when it needs to “turn off” and change into a different mindset. In these moments when the mind diverges into a new space, the self is actually in a state of unity and peace; even though the present self does not know it. The mind is “so powerful that it can create a state of absolute nothingness that seems totally concrete” (Thurman 461). This state can not only cause separation, yet, emptiness of the self as well. The void from reality allows a “[person] [to] go “somewhere else”, [to] be psychologically absent” (Stout

Get Access