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Lightbox Forum by James Rist “It’s all done with mirrors” The title, a phrase which, as nearly as I can determine, was coined by E. E. Cummings, suggests a means of tricking the perception with mirrors; and the phrase also aptly describes the tricks of my manic and alcoholic mind during the course of my misspent life. Now I am nearing the END of my life. How much time DO I have left!? Aging certainly puts time into perspective, doesn’t it? The irony rests in the fact that, as I become older, I become more patient. Where was that patience when I could afford the time to be patient!? ...when I was young. In the prime of my addiction and throughout the history of my bipolar disease, I have tended to have a distorted perception of almost everything from time to love, to life, to death, to spirituality..., but especially time. Optimistically I have between five and fifteen years of life remaining. What would my life have come to if I’d had to face that truth at, say, the age of sixteen? Would I have valued time differently? Would I have focused on living for the moment and maximizing the joy of living? It just seems cruelly ironic that, when I had the most to gain, I had the least to give–talking about youth. Life has things turned around that way, doesn’t it? I guess I’m trying to make the point, without making a big argument, that perception is perhaps a function of values and maturity–the very things we don’t have when we’re young–the very things my addiction and my bipolar disease seemed to continue to withhold from me long after my body had matured. Part of the angst of my diseases was that I did not “grow up” emotionally. I remained frozen in my lack of maturity from the onset of my diseases. A good deal of my recovery involves changing my childish or immature perception. The irony of my diseases is that I have to learn somehow that my perception is inaccurate and unrealistic before I can change. And, within the context of my diseases, I have to learn the connection between distorted perception and delusion–delusion being, from my viewpoint, the conviction that my perception is true and that I am absolutely unable to accept anything else but “my truth.” In my case, again without making an argument, my lack of maturity and reasoning, products of experience, fostered my distorted perception, and my brain chemistry turned that perception into a delusion. The delusion when it persists compels me to act in accordance with my delusion. As long as the delusion remains, I continue to act obsessively to satisfy whatever delusion consumes me. So I can say that distorted perception can lead me to a driven state–a state of obsession. In simplest terms, delusion is the lack of sound reasoning. The remedy for delusion then would be good reasoning, and the foundation for good reasoning begins with experience. However, as a bipolar individual and an addict, I have fearfully avoided that necessary experience, hiding, as it were, from the truth and continuing to kowtow to fear and distorted perception. The only way for me to escape the cycle which traps me in my illness is to enlist others in my reasoning process–others with experience I have not yet had and reasoning ability I do not yet possess. The process of restoring or inculcating good reasoning takes time, and I think some folks worry that the process takes too much time. Worry for me, however, is merely another word for fear. At my age, I no longer have the time to worry. I’m a lucky guy! Feedback? Jim Rist © 2006 www.cerebral-storm.com |
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