Eccentrics live longer, happier and are odd …

That’s according to a Dr. Weeks who made a scientific study of eccentricity and concluded, “The eccentric is very creative and curious and has vivid visual imagination in the daytime and vivid dreams at night.

“Eccentrics are intelligent, opinionated and frequently have a mischievous sense of humour. Many of them are loners and often have unorthodox living arrangements.”

All of which lends credence to this conclusion, which struck me as a bit off at first. “I do not know of any salvation for society except through eccentrics, misfits, dissenters, people who protest.” That’s according to William O. Douglas, (1898-1980) US Supreme Court Justice as quoted from The Power of Reason, by R. M. Hutchins, 1964.

Salvation yet?

Christopher Morely joined him suggesting we “Read every day something no one else is reading. Think every day something no one else is thinking. It is bad for the mind to be always part of a unanimity.”

Unanimity is dangerous?

On that aspect Dr. Weeks concluded: “There is also pretty solid proof that eccentrics are healthier.”

None of the above, nor Henry David Thoreau, seem terribly eccentric. Thoreau observed, “How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bed-ridden; all are world-ridden.”

“World-ridden?”

World-ridden fits like a glove today, and it comes from a man famous for casting aside the world for the tranquility of the wilderness, and telling us about it.

Surely the people of 1839 were not as “world-ridden” as we who seem intent on convincing ourselves we’re the most “world-ridden” people who’ve ever walked the face of the earth

Although, perhaps that’s unfair?

After all the manufacturers of cellphones, iPods, and every digital this that and the other thing you can imagine, all hasten to assure me, over and over and over again, that their gadget will save me so much time I’ll be able to retire early, and live like Thoreau, forever.

Really? So, are we all eccentrics in one way or another?

Canadian eccentricity …

Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) is, apparently an eccentric too. I found his words as accurate a description of global warming shenanigans as I’ve read since it became the flavour of the month. “Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.”

If it’s as urgent as leaders, scientists and environmentalists keep telling us might we be more effective if all the king’s global warming horses and all the king’s global warming men and women ride, and work, together, and all in the same direction at the same time?

Of course that’s after the eccentrics determine how to do it, eh?

An eccentric look at the weather. Here’s Twelve Months by Sir Gregory Gander:

Snowy, Flowy, Blowy,

Showery, Flowery, Bowery,

Hoppy, Croppy, Droppy,

Breezy, Sneezy, Freezy.

Eccentric perhaps, though I’d change the title to March!

Have a good April, and may the month, and your dealings with the CRA end well, and in your favour, and hail to eccentrics, Caesar has had his day.