We all live by, and within, our own realities. Most of the time, we all share these realities. We all act as if the chair we sit in is real, and will hold us. We believe, and in this case, it’s “true” based on empirical and replicable evidence. It works.
But what about Philip K. Dick, one of the most famous science fiction writers in history. He was also a philosopher, who posited that we may all be living in someone else’s dream. The “matrix” before The Matrix. He wasn’t convinced at all that the chair was “real.” Neither is the schizophrenic when off their meds. And let’s add, neither were some notable philosophers through the ages too.
So even something so “true” as the chair is not true to everyone.
Now let’s take it one more step. Why do you or I get up in the morning to live yet another day?
There are truly countless answers to this question. Many are based on well-thought-out “realities.” But others are hardly thought through. Some deep. Some shallow. Some complex. Some very simple. Some only unconscious.
But our individual realities, beliefs, and values, whether consciously thought of or not… they guide us (I would suggest they may drive us) to get up, live our lives, go to bed, get up, and do it all again. We breathe, we eat and drink, and we carry on in our realities. Until some of us don’t. Because, for whatever reason, their reality no longer worked to keep them alive.
Many brilliant people, many creative geniuses, many “successful” people… they choose not to carry on any longer. People who had value to us and many others… their “reality” no longer worked for them. They ended their lives because their reality did not work for them anymore. Robin Williams is the most painful example of that to me. You likely have a name in your mind right now too.
THAT’S MY STORY TOO
In September 2019, I got caught with a detailed date and time suicide plan. I was hospitalized. I was 61 years old. My lifetime Bipolar 2, and my exhausting life, finally caught up with me. I had spent my entire life in a functional deficit, white-knuckling my constant suicidal ideation, and my manic and irresponsible hypomanic highs. My driving reality, the only one that worked, was that I was critically needed for one “big reason” after another. A mission.
Suddenly, in my breakdown, I no longer had a critical mission. I had no more dependent children. I lost my business of 17 years. I lost our home. I lost the only reality that drove me to get up every day. I’ve been in an existential crisis since then.
I left the church. I completely deconstructed *all* of my lifetime religion and beliefs. In grief and anger, I hurled everything off the table, and have been trying to place things back one at a time for three years. I’ve been trying to build from scratch a new “operational reality” that will keep me alive. Trying to do this with several serious health issues on top of severe mental illness has been no walk in the park. It has fueled even deeper depression.
I see a psychologist. 30 years experienced. I do EMDR therapy. I see a psychiatrist. I take meds. But all the king's horses and all the king's men have not put me together again. I’m on Social Security Disability. I am truly unable to hold down a job. I sleep a lot. A lot. I’m emotionally fragile. I dissociate at times for days. (Zombie state.)
Several weeks ago, I spent four days in a Crisis Center. It wasn’t the first time. Bipolar 2 sufferers are 30 times more likely to commit suicide. I know why. Their reality stops working for them. It’s no longer enough to carry the burden of the disease.
FRESH REALITIES
I will only survive with fresh realities that work for me now.
I’m typing at 5 am, New Year's Day. Have been awake all night. Gave up trying to sleep an hour ago. Too much coffee, too much party, too much “mixed episode” energy. I’ll likely edit the following list a dozen times in the next few days. Please don’t offer advice, pushback, or debate these.
Not a single new operational reality is an empirical reality. I do not wish to debate them. I certainly cannot “prove” any of them. They are the pieces I have slowly put back on the table over three years to help me form a “reality” for me uniquely. One that I hope will keep me alive. Frankly, I wouldn’t bet on me, or them.
My path is *my* path. If you judge it… I will likely delete your comment. I’ve lived my life by the values of others. By *their* philosophy or *their* religion.
Like I said… I’ve listened to it all. I’ll pick for myself now the pieces I need. No more gurus or guilt.
It’s literally life and death for me right now. And I still may lose.
MY OPERATIONAL REALITIES
1. The only thing that matters to me is BEAUTY. If it’s beautiful to me, it creates the greatest inner calmness there is. Beauty. It’s the most life-giving thing to me.
2. The most beautiful thing I’ve seen is self-emptying love. Love like a mother gives to her newborn baby. I’ve seen decades of it. It’s everywhere and in people of every religion, and people of no religion. It permeates our planet. I’ve seen it create beauty in the darkest of places, and the direst of circumstances. I believe love is the ground of the greatest beauty.
3. Since love is the ground of the greatest beauty, I will first live to receive love. To receive it as the nectar of the gods. I will then give love. In both the receiving of love, and then the giving of it, I will find the greatest beauty. A beauty that I believe will overpower the inner darkness of my suffering.
4. I experientially feel, and cannot shake, the presence in and around me, of a Ground of all Love. A Person, a Creator of all, a Ground of all Being. This “God” of all that is, is a God beyond comprehension or the boundaries of religion. I sense, believe, and feel that this Being is Pure Love.
5. I experience and ground my operational reality in the belief that the Being of Perfect Love, by its own very nature, must pursue me in love in Its desire for full communion. And this Being cannot by nature use coercion or threats of any kind to make this happen. Love and threats are mutually exclusive.
6. I believe this Love is infinite, tender, and patient. Non-coercive. In a mystery I don’t need to understand, I feel that every move of genuine free will on the chessboard of the cosmos, will be outplayed to checkmate by the Grandmaster Love. I believe that “They all lived happily ever after” is the promise of Love.
7. I believe that in order for this to happen, again in a mystery I don’t need to understand, this Infinite Love joined with humanity in the Incarnation to ensure it would happen. With zero empirical truth to separate this from myth, I’ve never seen nor heard a more beautiful story to me than this 2,000-year-old Story. I will breathe in its beauty, and rest in its hope.
8. The greatest words I ever heard in my life were in 2011, when this sentence exploded in my brain: “God looks at everyone always with only tender eyes.” These simple words gave me six years of the greatest peace… the only peace… I’ve ever truly known. I will live again as if they are the very words of Love Incarnate.
9. I will live by the mantra given to me by a farmer in 2011, at a peak point of crisis. “Just be loved.” I will breathe in love. I will look for it everywhere and in everyone. The smile from a stranger in the checkout line… I will choose to receive it as the smile of God.
10. I will choose each day to surrender my need for all that is no longer enough for me: duty, mission, accomplishment, title, business card. These were barely enough before. Now they are not enough to keep living.
So I will choose each day to seek and soak up love, from family, friend, and stranger. I will seek to reciprocate. In doing both, I will feel that love is its own reward. That I can find all that I need to live by living in communion with the Infinite Ground of Love, and with all those, everyone, that Love created and filled with the seeds of love.
Love can be… must be for me… enough.
May it become my very food and drink.
May it become the reason I want to get up in the morning.
May love be enough.
Wow! Thank you for the gift of sharing the operational realities you have fought and are fighting for, and why you are fighting. Although I haven't suffered from a diagnosable or severe mental illness, your words still speak very deeply to my own experience. Every morning that I awake to pain and the prospect of another (fruitless?) 12-hour work day, I reach for my own operational realities. Your list bears so many striking resemblances to one that I made for myself this summer, as I tried to sever the last ties to protecting myself from having my faith condemned as an unbiblical fantasy by people whose approval I used to think that I desperately needed. Thank you again! May love be enough for you today.
Posted by: Mark Lama | January 05, 2023 at 04:39 AM
Thank you so much. I needed this today.
Posted by: Mark McNeill | January 03, 2023 at 07:16 AM
Beautiful,tender, and broken....like a delicate, priceless antique I hesitate to handle with my words, yet I am compelled. Every operational reality you've written I relate to. My own experience and change has revealed the same, though I have not written so succinctly. Wishing you peace and much love....
Posted by: Beverly Tucker | January 02, 2023 at 05:24 AM
“‘“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”’
Posted by: Jean | January 01, 2023 at 05:51 PM