Letter from the MadMan

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The following is a letter from a fictional character, the Madman.

I don’t remember the first time I started the chase. It came upon me rigorously unwelcome. It somehow cut and tied me to the Devil of unpaid dues. It left me wondering whether it is an escape or just a sour test of faith. This letter is to all those who welcome so warm-heartedly the idea of Knowing without really knowing — those who clench their beliefs of acquired moral and cultural schooling enforced by the authorities of brainwashing.

So pathetic, full of doubts, pride, and ironic vanity, I had to admit my tragedy.

To the mass assumers of Knowing of the truth so blindly, don’t you know that the curse itself is the obsession with Knowing? It’s visible and apparent in the cave of any religion, tribe, or city in any country. It’s embedded in the spiritual beliefs and foolish patriotic belongings that have filled voids for centuries.

Again: All those who welcome so warmheartedly the idea of Knowing, let me tell you a truth with the utmost incivility. Will you allow it to cut through your intrinsic need for a Deity?  

The truth is that we do not know anything about our Beings; nor have we witnessed any proof of our beliefs and morality. 

I have at least found the audacity to make peace with my fragility. Can you? Or have you accepted your lost conformist self and surrendered to the mystical ideas of what is and what will be? 

Let’s dig deeper ruthlessly, as harsh as that might sound, into the delicate will and address the followers of the classically imbalanced so-called spirituality.

I ask of you to absorb an omniscient truth with an open mind; we do not know a glimpse of this universe’s hidden mysteries. No matter the trials, we fail to know the source of our existing reality.

To ironically simplify it even further, more than 300 trillion signals are happening in your brain per second as you read this sentence. We do not know a thing. Accordingly, respectfully, let’s not assume the Knowing.

“There is always some madness in Love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”

 — Friedrich Nietzsche. (1844-1900)

Descartes says, “I think; therefore, I am,” which led him to end his skepticism after a tiring journey of doubt, uncertainty, and vulnerability. I suppose, to me, it is “I love; therefore, God.” I can, with all naivete, say that Love helped align me.

She was my savior at a moment of extreme despair. And while in my most desolate state of Being, her Love gave Order to my Psyche and proof of my existence. She was the reason I lived and continue to hold on beyond my self-inflicted desperate face of guilt, lust, and the fiasco of my misfortune and soul catastrophe.

After all the years and prolonged scrutiny, Perhaps I would have given up. I wouldn’t have withstood the adversities I had to endure if it wasn’t for the unexplained feeling of Love. And that makes her qualify as the one who gave me Life.

She was a center for my moral formation, which I leaned back on when I needed to survive all the panic and anxiety. Some moments, I would even believe that she was the moral formation itself.

Maybe she was brought upon me to help mold the idealization of my self-indulging need for Meaning — a Meaning to hold when Hell breaks loose and life evaporate. 

Counting my screwups fatigued me. I fail even to begin to articulate the depths of my mental and physical mishaps and the long-lost authority over my moral judgment. And yet, here I am, speaking to the needy strong and the contradicting of soul: I pray that you may find the perseverance to listen to the depth of Philosophy and shed some light across the tunnel by thinking forward beyond the written tragic harsh lives.

Perhaps I, the Madman, shall judge myself and look down with self-pity. 

Perhaps I shall bring upon me the Reaper to bestow a judgment on me and help me with my pursuit of the dark, which has marked me with self-righteousness. 

“Let me be,” I found myself asking my almighty. “Leave me alone.” For once, the veil has fallen, and I have felt the acceptance of my self-worth and pathetic irony. 

I became exhausted, avoiding the reality that most of who we are is deadwood and voids of a shapeless reality. But I decided not to let it destroy me. The reality that we are nothing but mortal creatures trying to make sense of the world through tragedies — preparing ourselves for the upcoming rational trial to shed light with all novelty — to then witness our Evil looking inside us, through us, standing with unjustified grandiosity, asking us for dues yet to pay. 

To that, with everything but humility, I shall stand speechless, and I am good with words. I will stand moveless, and I am good at expressing my charismatic, egocentric personality. I will stand blind, and I know I am a visionary. 

I say, let me collide with the immortal unknown, and allow me to see it. Only then, with all audacity and self-respect, can I dare to utter the words: “I have beaten it.” I have beaten the self-indulging Evil with all its lusts, the smoking and the drugs, and all that gives us a finite Meaning to Life and a reason to keep going just one more anxious day with a heavy head and a give-up mentality. 

Is it worth it? I asked myself as I tried to conclude something from the nonsense and some sort of Meaning from the emptiness to help me hold on through the pain with all courage. I accepted that I’d given up from the inside, as I stand hopeless, I must go on with my spirit and all that remains of me.

And if I am too blind to see that the chase and the fortitude to go on is the Meaning of Life itself in its most authentic and purest form of philosophy and all the unconditional sacrifices I had to make for the ones I love, so foolishly and eloquently, if I am too blind to see that, then with all clarity, I have courageously failed. For that and all hereafter, I am doomed to kneel, and I am obliged to endure it all and hold the tears of pain and joy as they collide with all despair. Just like Adam, caught between God’s authority and the Devil’s advocacy.

At my last heartbeat, when my immortality confronts me, and I lay down in my grave with the rusk and bricks of all my sorrows and guilt treading around me, finally over from all the heavy-chested days and nights, I, the Madman, may then beg for my mortality. 

Looking to God’s face with all my glory and my reality of grandeur, I will have earned the right to say that I conquered it all, with my self-earned legacy as I write my hundredth book about Life’s philosophy. Just like my father did before me, I overcame myself with all fortitude and have finally reached my alignment and accepted all my failures, graciously. For that, I, the Madman, will slay all adversities finally. 

Let’s not make a big noise out of our irrational animalistic humanity, and let’s accept our yet-to-come utopia made from the wreckage of our hopes and the ashes of our dreams. Against all odds, let’s look in the mirror and right into our eyes, if we dare. And let us see that it is not the Sane who must understand the Mad, but the Mad who must make sense of the Madness of Sanity.

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.” 

― Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881)

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