And we call them crazy

I live in the south side of the city. Across the street there's a institution where mildly "mentally ill" kids reside. Today, they are playing outside in the little playground. Looking up from over my laptop I noticed them walking around, riding a trike bicycle,  sitting on a skippy ball, but what mostly hit me was that the seem to just "be". One of them just walks around, wiggles from one foot on the other, walks back to the nurse, wiggles around, and repeats. Another rides the trike while his friend simply follows him, untill he sees something else that interests him and he walks in that direction. Another one just sits on a skippy ball and looks up to the sky.

This is in no way a judgement of those kids! The whole display really, really touched me. And it felt as if I saw my own brain in those kids. My mind wonders around following whatever comes up. My mind wiggles around, to return and wiggle around some more. My mind feels like rolling around on the floor or hobbling a skippy ball too. All together, at once.

But what my mind also does, is constraining all those movements, cramping me in my own body and only showing the outer world my thoughts and behavior that's mostly socially accepted. To continue in me going on taking training sessions to 'be free'. Which to some extend just means reprogramming my conditioned 'natural'  responses (and mostly reprogramming my self-judgement of the other possibilities of 'natural' responses). Both are, of course, just another form of conditioning.

There is (or is it my belief?) truth in the approach that one needs 'ego'  before one can recognize his own conditioning. Then, there's practicing in accepting your conditioning, your fears, your cravings and accepting everything you don't want to show to the world. Then, there's the deliberating feeling of you living more on an intrinsic compass than on expectations of the outer world. And than, some say it might be possible to eventually be enlightened. Yet, I think there's a contradiction in "to be enlightened" since it seems as if it is something that can be done. Yet, nothing is done. Everything just happens. You just stop manipulating yourself and you stop effortlessly trying to manipulate the world around you.

Just like those kids across the street seem to do. 

And we call them crazy??