An Oddly Amazing Moment

I haven't blogged in over a year, so hopefully this will be a good one...If a bit rambly and random...

I've heard it said that some Native American cultures revere people who are insane, because in their view, the spirits spoke to and through them. The people just couldn't handle it, and that's what explained the unusual behavior. And because of this, they were to be revered. I've always found that interesting. Today I had an experience that made me think they might just have been right...

I was coming home on the bus, and a man who is not in his right mind got on in Fremont. He usually waits at a bus stop further along and goes up to the bus, yells out something incoherent, and then scurries away. But today he got on. He called out stuff randomly, and everybody did their best to ignore him, and give him his space. He sat in the front, without anybody else around him. Not that anybody had moved to avoid him, that part of the bus was empty when he got on. Anyway, finally a woman got on and sat across from him, so he eventually directed his gibberish at her. He told her how he was going to visit his mother in Northgate because Cher was visiting and he wanted to see her. Then he pointed to another woman several seats away and said that he thought she was pretty and that she looked like his mother and that his mother was a model. The woman across from him listened politely as he spoke. A moment later he said that he hadn't been chosen for his looks. He looked at her and repeated that a few times. And then he said "I know this, I wasn't chosen for my looks, I know this. Most people will say they know things, but I *know* it." He really emphasized that he truly knew this, as if somebody had told him. Then he asked the woman across from him if she knew what she'd been chosen for and she said she hadn't been chosen for anything, she had no recollection of being chosen. He looked at her as if she was so strange, as if, how can anybody not know they what they were chosen for in life? It was the most obvious thing to him.

It made me sit back and wonder to myself. Maybe he knew he was chosen because somebody really had told him. But not a mortal somebody, like his mother or a teacher, but maybe the spirits really did talk to him and reveal such things to him. Maybe he could see things we can't. It was a really cool moment; it made me realize that you never know what you can learn from a person. Even an insane man on the bus. Even he has wisdom to share with you and the world, and sometimes it's a good thing to listen. You were chosen for something, sir, I absolutely believe that...