A Rule of Thumb for Our Times

Jeff—Saturday

Warning: I’m not in a good mood.

I fell asleep at three last night and at seven-thirty a crew of rowdy partiers returned home in an assortment of heavily altered states.

Arrggh. 

Actually, I’m used to it. It comes with choosing to spend high season at the heart of summertime Europe’s party central island. Yes, that undoubtedly says more about me than my neighbors, but don’t lump Barbara into the diagnosis as she escapes to calmer shores until mid-August.

Could I be crazy?  Don’t everyone rush to answer, for after all, it’s the only chance I get to see good friends from around the world who also enjoy/endure insane August.  Besides, the energy of the place definitely inspires me. I write at a clip where words come at twice their normal pace, and I generally stay at home to write, what with the town and beaches sheer madness. 

Hmm, I’ve now used “crazy,” “insane,” and “madness” in one paragraph—plus “diagnosis” elsewhere—which brings me around to an observation I heard a few years back from a Mykonos friend who served many decades as assistant to the chief of psychiatric services for one of the United States’ most populous states.

He had a rule of thumb for explaining the state of our world, formed through his years of first hand professional observation.  Here goes: 

“Thirty percent of everyone out there should be institutionalized, another thirty percent need heavy medication.  That leaves forty percent to work with, and half of them simply won’t like you.”

That’s a pretty dire—and dour—outlook on our world, or even just the US.  I found it hard to believe, yet too irresistibly funny not to quote.  After all, to some extent it’s undoubtedly true, but the percentages had to be way off.  I mean sixty percent of the population in need of serious mental attention?   Come on…no way that could be accurate. 

Enter 2016.  What the hell is going on out there?  Truth is now such a negotiable commodity that alternative realities have gained a firm foothold in our belief systems. People who don’t even know how to spell Schadenfreude are rooting for it. 

If the sixty percent is on the march, thankfully so far it’s to different drummers. The question is, what role does the forty percent plan on taking?

I sure wish I knew the answer. It used to be I thought only those on Mykonos in August accepted madness as normal. Now it seems a worldwide phenomenon.

At least on Mykonos, come the fall, sanity traditionally returns.  I’m not so sure about that for the rest of the world.

We shall see. And pray.

—Jeff