Most people are crazy, aren't they?

Have you ever wondered "what the hell were they thinking"? Especially when somebody thinks differently than you do? I run into that all the time. Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy and the rest of the world is sane. So, to hedge my bet that I'm sane, I only accept things that are pretty much provably real. What method do you use to prove that the things that you believe in are well founded in fact and sanity?

When you run down a flight of stairs do you feel safer with at least one hand on the railing, or do you just fly down the middle, like Obama disembarking Air Force One? Remember President Ford did a few headers of AF1. If I'm pretty sure of my subject, I can fly down the middle without grasping the rail, but other times I need that firm grip on reality, my railing, my touch stone.

When I go out in the ocean, I try to determine if I think that I can swim to shore from where the boat presently is. At some point, I have to accept that I'm just plain to far out to survive if something goes wrong with my boat. Not a very comfortable feeling for me! I don't really feel that anybody will be able to save me in time. It seems like most rescues have a high percentage of disaster.

When somebody "Loves" a redwood tree, (I do) I feel that I have to know all about that tree. I really feel That I have part redwood sap in my veins. I'm at least 5th generation of people that have lived in the redwoods. We built our own houses, mostly from redwood. My family hand split most of the lumber in the houses that they lived in in the early days. I have split many tons of redwood. I can split anything that can be split out of a redwood. I have hand-dug up small redwood stumps, and dozer-dug up larger ones. I know all about how tough and strong the roots of a redwood can be. I know that most of the trees that people look at, and admire, and think they are a couple of thousand years old, really only have three or four hundred growth rings. Yet, I also know that the same redwood is really sprung-up as a clone from the roots of many ancestor trees. Many redwoods are the same genetic stock back ten to twenty thousand years to the original tree grown from seed stock. Yet people will see a redwood, "fall in love with it" then set about protecting it, when they really know nothing about what it needs to survive. To me that's insanity. My first reflex is to reach for that railing of reality, I am compelled to learn enough about a subject to offer an opinion before I express one. Or at least ask a few questions.

People use drugs just to "get-high", to me, that's insanity. I fear not being in control of where I am and what I'm doing, yet I see people with no fear of getting high. I tip a beer every now and then, it goes away rapidly and I'm sober after and hour or so,and alcohol is a natural part of fruits and other vegetables, so it's not like I putting anything in my body that is not good for me, but to drink so much that I would not be in control of myself would be insanity to me. Remember, I don't like loosing touch with reality. Why do so many people seek that insane place of obliviousness?

Life can be so darn much fun if you live it. Why do people drop-out, hate the man, and basically become a recluse. Some people actually live on the streets out of choice. Some people have fried their brains on drugs and alcohol. Why do they do that? No amount of counciling changes them. Are people inherently insane, and why do they do the things that they do?

My solice in deciding whether or not I'm sane is, I seak the things around be that I know are real, and use these things as a base. Other people seem to take great joy in imaginary things, drugs and not dealing with reality. Who's crazy, me or people that live in a fantacy world.