"Hope you're doing well..."

I know better than to ask 'how' you're doing.
It seems insensitive in light of your current
plight.

I don't say 'Hope you're doing okay,'
because that sounds like I'm cursing you to
mediocrity.

I say "I hope you are doing well" as a prayer
and a blessing for your continued mental,
physical, emotional, and spiritual well being.
It may be all that I can do, until you are
ready to let me in, but it is not a wish made of
empty feelings.

'Doing well' means that I hope you are
remembering to care for yourself since
I can't. I hope you are doing the things
necessary to stay healthy, wealthy, and
wise...even though your heart may not
be in it.

It means I hope that you aren't letting
your friends and family's emotional
issues and traumas seep over and have
an adverse effect on you. Because you
and I can't allow ourselves the luxury
of absorbing other people's tragedies. We
have enough trouble 'fixing' us. And if
we aren't staying well and balanced and
focused and sturdy, we certainly can't
be of use to others.

I say all of this with true compassion,
and not a hint of animosity (though
you may not believe it now;) I am strong
enough to take your pain and lashing
out right now. I understand that you are
angry at things you can't control; death,
life, God, circumstance. I just happen to
be someone whom you can wrap words
and wrath around. And maybe you trust
I will love you enough to look beyond
this. I will not take it inside and make it
personal.

'Doing well' is shorthand all the great many
things I would like to say but that I am
not granted the time or audience to
say. My window of opportunity may not
be sufficient to speak the mountains of love
and concern I have in my heart for you.

It means, as cruel as this is, that life does
go on for the living. And if we don't stay in
the flow, it does go on without us. That won't
change reality, it won't bring anyone back,
and it certainly won't honor their memory
and importance to squander our miracle.
Our voice. Our passion. Our purpose.

Until the zest returns, until the light is back
on, you may have to muddle through and
fake it. Please fake it, until such time comes.
Let the action draw you along until the
inspiration returns.
We still love and need you.

Our pain cannot define us. Our grief and
misery cannot rule us. It isn't healthy for
us. It isn't fair to the living. It isn't respect
for the departed. This, too, shall pass.

Feel your rage.
Express it wisely, for your life is still going
strong, and you may have need of tomorrow.

Scream in a parked car. Beat a tree with a
bat. Get a punching bag and beat the hell
out of it. Get a junkyard car and destroy it.
Walk for hours. Run. Pray. Cuss God.
Cry.

Write your thoughts down. Send a letter to
your loved one. Talk to another person who
grieves. See a counselor. Go to group.
Let people in. Pray for help and understanding.
Release the pain.
Ask for help.

Everything you're feeling is normal and
all of it's okay. Feeling like hell is part of
tragedy. Hard as it is, we can and will make
it. Even though we may not care right now.

The only way past it, is through it. And until
you make it through, I pray you are doing
well. As well as can be expected. As well
as you can muster. Well enough to see what
blessings are still present, and not obscured
by loss.

I'll still be here when you're ready.

An Introduction, An Explanation

My intention with doing a site about coping with manic-depressive illness (Bi-polar disorder) was to be sure not to allow it to degenerate into hand-wringing and recounting of miseries.

The best means of accomplishing that is to dub the site something inspiring, magical, upward-thinking. To better explain my choice, what follows is from philosopher Albert Camus' essay on redefining the mythological hero of Sisyphus. It does, after all, always come down to perspective. Realizing that we who are sick my not be in the best position to comprehend the world around us is a first step.

The reading can be a bit dense, but it's worthwhile. Skim it, consider it, come back to it later. Give it a chance. I know patience is ever a principle I must seek.

Welcome!
-Rob

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The Myth Of Sisyphus

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The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this. Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld.

To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets. Egina, the daughter of Esopus, was carried off by Jupiter. The father was shocked by that disappearance and complained to Sisyphus. He, who knew of the abduction, offered to tell about it on condition that Esopus would give water to the citadel of Corinth. To the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water. He was punished for this in the underworld. Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.

It is said that Sisyphus, being near to death, rashly wanted to test his wife's love. He ordered her to cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square. Sisyphus woke up in the underworld. And there, annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love, he obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth in order to chastise his wife. But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness. Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, lead him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him.

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.

It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Edipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Edipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.

One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. "What!---by such narrow ways--?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd. discovery. It happens as well that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Edipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.

All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

---Albert Camus