Balancing a Life

Think for a second what it would be like if you had no control over your emotions, your surroundings, or anything you heard. How hard would it be to keep your balance on life? Many people, including myself, would say that it would drive them mad. To me madness can mean a few different things. For one example my girlfriend thinks I am somewhat crazy because I feel like I have to get at least a one mile run in every day. Other people think that is normal. There is one kind of madness that I think we can all agree on however, and that is the madness that the main character feels in Salman Rushdie's short story "The Harmony of Spheres".

The main character in this short story is named Elliot. He is a paranoid schizophrenic who can both hear and feel demons. Because of these demons he was unable to make sense of what was going on and they soon took over his life. "In the end his demons came for him, his Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and his Crowley and Blavatsky, his Dunsany and his Lovecraft long ago. They crowded out the sheep on his Welsh hillside, and closed his mind"(P. 141-142) These demons eventually drove Elliot so mad that he was forced to take his own life.

Reading this story I myself was feeling a little unbalanced due to the style of writing. I feel that this may have been the author's inttention however it was a bit hard to follow. I think that whenever we are unable to make sense of things around us and unable to see what is real or not we lose our bearings in life. Elliot was consumed by this madness of not being able to get a grasp on reality.

I think as a society we need to fight off these demons. Not too many of use have the types of demons that Elliot faced but I think we need to fight of the "evil" side of our conscience. If we keep our eyes on the good and positive things that surround us I believe that one is able to lead a happy and quite balanced life.