Seeing things from another point of view

In his wonderful tragic and comedic tale “Don Quixote,” Miguel de Cervantes writes:

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: To see life as it is, and not as it should be!”

The world has been suffering from too much reality lately. With grim news in the Middle East, fear emanating from North Korea, the smell of fresh, daily manure coming out of Ottawa, and the continuance of the absurd comedy set in the Oval Office south of border, one might be forgiven for sinking into the quagmire of cynicism and despair.

Such was the affliction of the title character Don Quixote of the book previously mentioned, a rich Spanish lord, who decided to do something about his despair by taking up the mantle of a knight errant. He quested in his own absurd way to do some good in a world which no longer wanted or needed chivalry. Although mocked by all who saw him in his thrown together armour upon his broken-down, old nag, Don Quixote stayed true to his vision, sacrificing himself for the world he wanted in the end. Another notable in the vein of Don Quixote was Joshua Norton, a failed businessman in mid-19th century San Francisco disgruntled with the politics and social dysfunction of his day.

In 1859 Norton, fed up with his own sense of despair, donned a fancy, military-style uniform and declared himself Emperor Norton I, Emperor of the United States; and began walking the streets as such. At first considered a harmless crank, his reputation slowly grew until he became a major tourist attraction in his own right. He even issued his own currency to pay for his debts, which was eventually accepted as real money at any establishment in San Francisco. He made public declarations in a royal style which were published in local newspapers of the day. In one such declaration Emperor Norton took aim at the hyper-bipartisan climate in Washington D.C.

“Being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our realm,” he said in 1869, “I do hereby dissolve and abolish the Democratic and Republican parties, and also do hereby decree the disfranchisement and imprisonment, for not more than 10, nor less than five, years, to all persons leading to any violation of this our imperial decree.”

Norton evidently stood for something America needed at the time, and when he died in 1880 about 30,000 people attended his funeral.

Both with Emperor Norton and Don Quixote, the takehome lesson is while we may not always find the world to be as we would wish, we must always strive to see it from another point of view. A better world is always possible even if it may be temporarily clouded from our sight. As Don Quixote says to all of us stuck in the daily grind and mire of this one: “Thou hast seen nothing yet.”