Who is "mad" - me or she??

Last week I visited a friend who introduced me to her grandmother who was apparently "not quite right". She certainly seemed all right to me, but apparently she wasn't. Since I didn't know the grandaughter too well, I couldn't really question her, so while coffee was being made, I talked to the "not quite right" grandma. Or rather, she talked to me.

The news was on and there was a man talking about the failure of the war in Iraq, to which the grandma listened quite patiently beofre suddenly sayin - we don't realize that everything we do, we do only for ourself. Even when we help someone, we help them only because it gives us the satsifaction of having done some good. And only God does things for others without looking for personal happiness. Not exactly how I see the war in Iraq (!!) or God for that matter, so was this what made her "not quite right"?

No, 'course not cos when the chick came back with coffee she decided to show me just how "not quite right" her grandma was. She proceeded to ask her grandmother a series of questions. What year is this? After much thought the answer came back - 1982. How old was she? 55 (she was actually 79). How old was the granddaughter? 'you graduated last year. 24' (correct). Where did she live? An address so far out in the suburbs I had not heard of the place (though they actually lived very close to the city). Where was grandpa? Glancing at the clock on the wall, 'at work' (he had died about 20 years ago I think) and so on.

Throughout this questioning, this chick found these answers hilarious. And the questions got wackier till I told her I didn't find it funny. I don't know what exactly the grandma had for she remembered some things quite correctly and other things so very incorrectly..but what disconcerted me was not the errors the grandma made, but the fact that this girl I had thought was quite "normal" was so entertained by her grandmother's "madness". Wasn't that a much worse madness than whatever the old lady had?? And is the fact that I find the girl "mad" and not at all hilarious mean that I myself is afflicted with some sort of "madness"?

Why is it that we are so quick to see madness in others but not in ourselves? Why is it that we must always point to that mad person and not to this mad person in the mirror? Is it because if we start seeing our own madness, we can never surface from the dark labyrinth we are dragged into? Is it because we start seeing people in the dark alleyways that hitherto ran empty in solitude within us? Maybe it's because when we start seeing those that hover in the twilight of our hearts, we expect others to see them and we want others to see them. When they cannot, we are disappointed. Maybe it is to shield ourselves, from this disappointment, from that feeling of utter aloneness we feel when we realize that we are alone among those ghosts within us, that we refuse to see the madness within us and are quite happy to pass judgment on others.