The Sanity In Madness

We were writing notes on Oscar Wilde's style of writing today and my teacher made a reference to Alice in Wonderland, where the Cheshire Cat says to Alice, "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad"
What Lewis Carroll intends to say is that we're all eccentric and crazy, its just that some of us have the gift of recognising it better than others.
So, the question lies therein. Are the ones we consider 'mad' actually the brilliant ones? Have they discovered some strange truth that the world isn't privy to yet? Oscar Wilde was definitely eccentric, flamboyant, sarcastic, clever, witty; he could very easily have been one of Carroll's characters. He had the exquisite talent of camouflaging the fact that he looked at the Victorian society with contempt, but his writings made his opinion about them obvious. However, it was written so cleverly that even the smartest and touchiest of us would find ourselves laughing. He wasn't preaching through his plays; he was entertaining. And for me, that's the best way to learn one's shortcomings and faults. Nobody wants to be told that they're artificial and hypocritical. Yet, that is exactly what Wilde did and he was celebrated for it. He was celebrated for his 'madness'. He wasn't didactic. He was the entertaining playwright that everybody wanted to be friends with. Popular, handsome, insanely clever, the world was his oyster. Its tragic that he met such a terrible end. It was his very wit, his arrogance, his flamboyance that cost him dearly.
On that happy note, I think its okay to be mad. Its not just okay, its the way to be. For me, anyway. It's the way to be happy. It's honest, it's real and it's easy. You don't have to pretend. And if anyone tells you that you're mad, trust me, only the best of us are. And yes, I took that from Alice in Wonderland.