One Hit Wonder
My wife and I stayed up late Thursday. Very late. We were into a few drinks and snow was set to begin sometime overnight, so we thought we would toast the first flakes. We paired the mezcal with a remote speaker and spent hours taking turns calling out one hit wonders and singing along to each song. Good or bad.
At about 1:30 our daughter and her friend who was sleeping over asked us to turn it down. When you outlast kids having a sleepover you know you’re up late. But we continued, a little quieter, until we quit sometime well after 3:00. The snow still hadn’t started.
When I woke up snow in rectangles of white, rimmed in dark, wet crevices, covered the bricks along the sidewalk out front. By the end of the day there’d be a lot more, so I shoveled a few times, the kids went sledding, and in the middle of it all, wind driving the rising swirl of white flakes, massive flakes cold and wet, that smacked your face and covered your shoulders, we had lunch with half of the neighbors at the pub. Because that’s what you do on a snow day.
We’re both out of work, and we face a situation of such freedom, liberty and opportunity where we can do anything we want to do. But we don’t. We’re not ones for risks. Responsibilities and fear that masquerades as pragmatism hold us back and promises us more of the same. Yet in a strange way there’s a certain liberty there. In working to stay established, bury our tempting impulses, avoid the influence of our wildest but unreflective desires and put food on the table we achieve a deeply satisfying independence. Safe, yes. Boring, maybe. But free nonetheless.
It wasn’t always this way. Deep in manic episodes I chased pleasures and temptations and set the world afire with charisma and creativity. At least I thought I did. Because it always ended in a hospital stay, or worse, and I’d emerge broken, broke, and dependent on family or the government just to get by. Where’s the freedom in that?
I struggled to get better. Did all I was supposed to do. It didn’t always work. Then I added meditation to the medication and life brightened and I settled down. I saw the failings in a system of therapy and servitude that profits greatly if patients get just well enough. But not so well that they don’t need costly, “professional” help anymore. What did I get? A steady job, an understanding wife, and a kid who’s starting to rebel. The same thing as almost everybody else.
Some of the people with bipolar disorder that I know think this sounds dreadfully boring. They lament that if they tried for such a life they’d miss the highs. Lose what makes them unique. And yes, I’ve traded a bit of excitement for a life of measured predictability. But they’ve traded any chance of security, and possibly independence, and even more possibly positively impacting other people’s lives, in a trade for periodic bursts of brilliance tempered by terror.
But secure independence, too, can spin off periods of brilliance. It’s not likely to make you famous, but neither is crashing and burning. I’m still rocked by inconsistency. The seductive pull of mania always beckons. But I’ve chosen to reject it and, in the classic telling of the American dream, do what I’m supposed to do and get by without owing much to anyone. Or not owing much financially. I owe my life to a select few who have accepted me and helped me along this path. For true independence, what my wife and I have achieved and now resolve to maintain, is not possible without other people. I owe it to these other people to stay well.
As for temperance, there wasn’t a lot of it that night with the one hit wonders. We fear we’re one hit wonders, too. But, despite the challenges we face right now, despite the endless grind of sameness that threatens to hold us down in our best years, we weren’t drowning our sorrows. For responsible sameness is not like that at all. When I meditate it’s the same thing every day. But in that anchored practice each session is different, beset by a tremendous range of emotions, thoughts, and possibilities. And in that repeated discipline a life of great potential, a life of potential realized, begins.
They say that every snowflake is different. Each snowflake independent and unreliant on each other. But they all come together to make snow, don’t they. They lay there together until the sun turns them to water and they wash off into some stream then some river then the ocean. But while they’re joined on the ground they bring such beauty and joy to the barren world of winter. They reflect the sun, and the world is a better place.