March 7, 2022
When you find something that answers all the questions you’ve been asking a lifetime, an entire lifetime, you experience a release you never dreamt possible. When you find something that addresses all the existential crises you’ve experienced that have driven you mad to a point near death, you want to share it with everyone. This is where I found it for me:
Please do yourself the incredible honor of watching it. I want you to find what I have found. I want you to find it earlier and faster than I did. I love you, I want the very best for you. I found the very best for me, and I want it for you, too.
Are all my problems magically solved from now having this information? Will I be cured of bipolar? Will my periods of intense depression subside and will I stop crying and wailing and furiously shaking my fist at God? No! Absolutely not! In fact, my problems will multiply and present as magnificently more complex. But I’m ready to tackle the big ugly stuff head on, recognizing full well I have much much much work to do.
I have begun, in earnest, to recognize and joyfully embrace the good stuff of life. The good stuff which my heart was for so long blinded to and even hardened against. The bad stuff will always be there, but I've begun mixing in the good, more and more good more and more often, because I have it now. I see it. I grasp it. I take it and make it mine. Because joy belongs to me. It always has. I just didn't know. And I'm so very proud I've finally gotten hold of the ability to live fully.
I understand, now, joy is not just happy. Joy doesn’t pretend to be happy. Joy doesn't see the glass as half full when it's not, it doesn't deny suffering. Joy doesn't send the message that there should be no suffering. Joy doesn’t deny one thing. Joy simply embraces all things.
I have joy. Why did it take so long? I guess I had to get through some pretty bad bad stuff so in the lookback, I could come to a full knowing and an ability to embrace the truth: the bad things make me better.
There’s something incredibly freeing in surrendering to a life of authenticity; choosing honesty and embracing integrity in all things. Am I perfect at it? No. Are any of us perfect at anything? Absolutely not. But I'm doing it. I'm not trying, I'm doing. All the while honing the skill, and, most importantly, building my resilience.
I win.
The Road Not Taken
-Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
