The name of the popular song from the late 90’s evokes joy, a sense of being carefree, and yes – why not? – the ability and right to do some loca (crazy) things in order to make life more exciting. And at some point in our lives most of us have done that, and often (but not always) it made life better for a while.
The way I’m using the title today however, has more to do with how so many lives are lived in that non-thinking way that “crazy” in the song title implies, but not in order to bring excitement into the life as described above, but because thinking is not being practised. Or better said, thinking is done in that non-thinking way that implies that the mind is being controlled by random thoughts that are not being thought consciously.
When I catch myself thinking for the 18th time how much I dislike doing the bills, or watching football on TV, or anything at all, and I realize that I had the same thought so many times before, but wasn’t actually aware of the thought the way I am now, the 18th time, then it is signalling to me that those other umpteen times I was not conscious. A similar case might be when I catch myself with a sad thought about something that happened in the past. I am familiar with the feeling the sad thought gives me, and when I become aware of the sad thought consciously, I realize I’ve been in that place of sadness for several days, where I’ve been going over and over the events that caused the sadness with no awareness until right now at this moment where I realized I was thinking these thoughts again.
Countless sages, writers, and philosophers have written about this phenomenon that happens to all of us, until we wake up. Until we begin to take responsibility for being conscious in our lives, for living consciously, and hence for being conscious at all times of the thoughts we have.
My new book Rewiring the Soul: Finding the Possible Self