The Next Big Thing
I went to my daughter’s volleyball game last night in the gym of Our Lady of Hope. The girls call the place Our Lady of Low Ceilings because the ceiling gets more hits than some players in each game. The coaches and ref agree on rules as to when a ball that hits the ceiling is in play and when it isn’t, and the ceiling tiles suffer from hard hits below.
At each school gym the girls play in, banners commemorating championship teams, retired numbers, and scholar-athletes hang from the walls. But as my eyes drift up as another ball careens off the ceiling I notice something that I’ve seen in all the gyms where these kids play. All the accolades on banners and plaques end in 2019, as if time froze, or even ended, once the pandemic began in 2020. We all held our breath then and have yet to exhale. These girls get on the court and really try, they give it their best, but the world is too exhausted and defeated to even stitch names and numbers to a cloth and hang it from a wall to celebrate them.
I’m afraid that in these three-and-a-half years we’ve all become victims, and I’ve played a role in that. First we focus on how we’re all different. Then we latch onto our differences instead of the things we share in common and adopt those differences as our identities. Then we demand that everyone accept our identities, make special provisions for us, even as we condemn them for their beliefs. Then, if we fail at anything, or even if we don’t get whatever we want, we blame it on others’ refusal to give us what we deserve, to make provisions for our difference, whether we earned it or not.
Advocacy for a cause can be a place of limited vision. You wind up speaking for others as if you know better. For the past few years I’ve written about mental illness to the point that many people think that is what I do. That is my cause. It’s not. My main message has always been to manage or even overcome mental illness and reduce it to merely a disease you have. Certainly not an identity that defines you. As I’ve railed before: I have a mental illness, yes. I am mentally ill, never. Bipolar disorder is a challenge I face. It is not, never has been, and never will be who I am.
But as our culture of victimhood festers I fight a losing battle. I think individual problems are best solved in communities. There is something noble in fitting in. Freedom demands limits or else it’s pointless, selfish anarchy. And all this going on and on about bipolar disorder has been as limiting for me as it has been helpful.
Sure there is a severe stigma against people with mental illness. But I can better change that by getting a job and doing it well than I can by making demands that I be given special privileges because I am exceptional. Incredible discipline forged through meditation has helped me defeat the whims of episodic behavior so that I can get up, go to work, love my family, be a good friend, learn something new, enjoy hobbies, feel honest emotions, sleep well, only to do it all tomorrow, and the next day, over and over again, just like everybody else that makes this country great.
Earlier yesterday I went to the funeral of a dear friend’s son. She is the most saintly person I know, and his death too young is proof that loss does not discriminate. During the mass the priest read from The Book of Wisdom, “The witchery of paltry things obscures what is right.” Years ago, as I set out on my journey to be recognized as a writer and a meditation teacher, I thought little efforts like making meals or cleaning the house were paltry things. Boy, was I wrong. Those little efforts make up a good life. When faced with the loss of a loved one we don’t miss the big works, we miss the little ways they touched us every day.
I feel the same way about the world at large and our experience since the pandemic. We are all obscured by paltry things like the differences that divide us and the striving meant to set us apart. We all need to exhale, get off guard, and be small. We all need to sit and share a drink or a coffee. I don’t want to be the bipolar guru anymore. I want to walk the beach on a gray day, start a business with my wife, read about history, share wine or whiskey with friends, and watch my daughter hit a ball high over the net. But not so high that it hits the ceiling.
So that’s all I’ve got. Onto something else. Thanks for reading.