“When One Is Finally Feeling Lucid, Clear-Eyed And Rational, People Always Ask If One’s Drunk.”

When one is finally feeling lucid, clear-eyed and rational, people always ask if one’s drunk.

Or high.

Isn’t that just totally mind-boggling? That when you reach a state of pure sanity, you’re called anything but.

Anyways, I have a theory – my theory goes that when people see someone who’s completely lucid, clear-eyed, rational, and awake they turn their heads as if they’re looking at some strange alien beast they’ve never seen before (for in fact they are), and in being unable to understand this strange being, not wanting to call it better than themselves, they verbally put it in a place of lower importance – they call it (the fully awake man) a drunkard. After all, calling him anything but would reacquire self-reflection of all previously held beliefs. And self-reflection is the last thing anyone wants to do.

But hey, who knows, the man might just be drunk.

Falsely yours,
Alain de Botton