No Payne No Gain: Craziness

Photo courtesy: Michelle Kwajafa

The creative person is not just creative in their vocation or avocation. They are not just a creative writer, creative artist, or creative musician; they are a creative being. Creative people think creatively and most dress creatively and behave creatively. Creativity is expressed on a continuum from mild to moderate to profound. In other words, some people are more creative than others and some are far more creative than others.

When an individual goes beyond profound creativity, they become abnormal and are identified as crazy or way too weird. Crossing the abnormal, crazy line is identified when the creative person can’t shut off their creativity or are so reinforced by their creativity they refuse to shut it off. Normal people are able to respond appropriately to environmental situations. Normal people dress and behave one way at church and a different way at a Friday night beer blast. Normal people pick up environmental cues and respond accordingly.

The reason normal people are able to adapt is because they learn incidentally and subsequently function within an external locus of control. As a creative person advances along the creativity continuum, they move toward an internal locus of control. When crossing the line to craziness, the locus of control is so internalized the individual loses contact with reality or doesn’t care about reality.

What is confusing to psychologists and sociologists is when the creativity goes beyond bizarre craziness and turns into ingeniousness. As an individual moves into the category of genius, the abnormal, crazy line begins to blur. At this point the normal general population begins to accept the person as a creative genius. When anointed at this highest level of creativity the individual is given a license to do just about anything they so desire; any time, any where, any when, any what.

Oftentimes a normal creative person gets so wrapped up in their creative world they lose contact with reality. When this happens, reality tries its darnedest to pound them back into conformity, but a few resist and cross the abnormal, crazy line only to be faced with:

You ain’t no Ernest Hemingway.
You ain’t no Pablo Picasso.
You ain’t no Wolfgang Mozart.

Now take a close look at yourself. Do you dress a little unusually? Do you act a little strange at times? Do you surround yourself with unusual things, very unusual things? Well, maybe you are a genius like Hemingway, Picasso, or Mozart, but nobody recognizes you for what you are. Or maybe you are just plain crazy like the rest of us want-to-be writers, artists or musicians whose work remain unrecognized and unappreciated.

Dr. James Payne, a nationally-recognized scholar, educator and speaker, is a professor of Special Education at the University of Mississippi and a Fulbright recipient. He is the developer of the PeopleWise Event Management System and the PeopleWise Profile System.