The next Einstein

'You see, there's a difference between all mad people', she said, half absent-mindedly, half wistfully.
'There's clean mad, and then there's dirty mad. But it's all a shame', she continued dully, 'You see, people celebrate the clean-mad. They are the intellects, the artisans and the thinkers of a generation. They bring forward society to their rising ideas, and people love that. They are mad, of course, because you have to be mad to think the way they do, but they shower, they trim their nails and although they mumble to themselves, they usually have a pipe stuck between their lips, and therefore society has invented some excuse for this unconventional behavior.'
'And what about the other type? The dirty type?' He asked.
'Oh. The dirty mad.' You could almost see the sadness, the compassion in her tome, 'They are the sorts you see on the streerts, dirt underneath their fingernails, scruffy hair, a beard far longer then social convention would usually allow, the sort you cross the road to avoid. The sad thing is, that they are most likely highly intelligent, they just haven't been given a chance. Society shuns them before they can even open their mouths. That's the terrible thing. They could be the smartest person on the planet, but they might as well be the only person on the planet. Nobody sees them.'
'So, what do you propose we do about it?'
'I don't know. Who knows, with these things? I suppose if one went to the street and started a conversation with some, not a conversation full of condemnation and judgement, but showing a sincere desire to know about them, about their lives, you might actually find your next Einstein. You just never know. Remember Pygmalion?'
He nodded, and looked out the foggy window into the cloudy grey sky. He wondered how true she actually knew everything she said was. Lighting his pipe, he began to dream.


[Image: Marching the Skies.]