Perspective on paranoia

A young man and his date sit in the bleachers watching a football game. It is in between plays, and the two teams are huddled up on their respective sides of the line of scrimmage. The man points to the offensive huddle of players,

“They’re talking about me,” he says to the woman.

This clumsy retelling of a “New Yorker” cartoon represents the sum total of my understanding of what I have been given to believe is the relatively common condition known as paranoia. I have sought to broaden my insight into the condition, but with little success. I have had good reason to seek such an understanding. Competent medical authority has stated, in no uncertain terms:

“You are a paranoid!”

The statement was not intended to judge or demean me in any way.  Rather it was an open acknowledgment of who I am, in much the same way that it would be helpful to acknowledge that I am smart, or that I am compassionate. The doctor who made the statement wanted me to be aware of one of the fundamental building blocks of my character.  He certainly wasn’t trying to put me down.

So, I have been left with the task of trying to understand what that declarative pronouncement really means. I might look toward the lyric of a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song from 1970, “Almost Cut My Hair,” which includes the line, “Increases my paranoia, like looking in the mirror and seeing a police car.” I might recall the scene from the film “Hannah and Her Sisters,” in which the Woody Allen character says of the man who lives alone surrounded by his books with only one of the sisters for company: 

“What a paranoid!”

I suppose I could go online and buy a book, though this prospect has never appealed to me much in this regard. I could do exactly what I’m doing now, write about it in the hope of gaining insight this way.