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I just spoke with a friend who lost a loved one. She struggles with her gift which happens also to be her curse. She's extremely compassionate and empathetic at an almost cellular level. In some ways she is like a companion pet that takes on the misery around themselves to heal others. When others are tense in the room she feels the need to balance this by putting on a happy face and planning a million activities; a knee-jerk reaction but compassionate nonetheless. Some might call this an intense personality to be around, and indeed it is, and others might attribute this to obsessive compulsive disorder, which could certainly be the case as well! But she wouldn't be the person I adore and love (and occasionally avoid for the very same reason) if it weren't for this dichotomy-of-a-trait.

The more I think about this, the more I realize that most of us are obsessive compulsive about something. Whether it's about feeling control over a situation or about how our clothes are folded, we're all a bit freakish and mutant. I think about the great minds that we all revere: Vincent Van Gogh, Marc Chagall, Howard Hughes, Harrison Ford, and so on. They're all thought to have OCD and/or manic-depression. Yet their greatness, discoveries, and moments of genius have come because of their obsessive behavior. I imagine that no great or beautiful thing in this world has come except by the fanatical fixation of an individual. Indeed some of these individuals have refused 'medication' for fear of losing their edge, their gift.

The architects and painters who made the Sistine Chapel, no doubt, tossed in their sleep, laying awake about some detail that only an arachnid might scarcely observe. Yet in the end we all marvel at these wonders, the airplane, a fine film, a concerto, a painting, because someone was nutty!! Hell, washing hands frequently was probably considered quite obsessive in the early 20th century but then again, most people probably thought that peeing out of ones ass was normal!