Dice—tools of gameplay, signifiers of randomness,
representatives of chance—are the very hands of fortune itself. They are
volatile devices, unpredictable by nature, and outside of family board games
and casinos, we seldom vest our happiness in their outcomes. Our lives would
simply be out of control. We instead sequester them away, deem them only
appropriate for fun and games, and test their apathy only when we want to. We
base our real-world actions and perceptions in the sturdiest of foundations; we
create routines, set goals, and incessantly check boxes off well-organized
lists.
While the true nature of our reality is
that of constant flux, the paradigm through which we experience it is tacitly
of our own sturdy crafting. However, there are also those among us whose
paradigms of perception are cataclysmically enslaved to the dice. Their
concepts of reality are not determined by themselves, but are rather subjected
at any moment to a broad spectrum of changes: drastic inflation, demoralizing
manipulation, and everything in between. These unlucky minds are those ravaged
by bipolar disorder, and the very lens through which they see the world,
themselves, and their peers is either bent or flattened at every turn of the
game. They are dice-rollers, and I am one of them.
Dice represent the all-too-random brain
chemistry we live with every day. Soaring highs of mania and crushing lows of
depression are regular to us, but never expected, and this perpetual cycle of
boom and bust is simply a harsh variable in the formula of life. Alan Watts, in
his work, The Book: On the Taboo Against
Knowing Who You Are, described the relativism of our world with the
selfsame terms I use to console the havoc of my mood:
. . . Just as the hour-hand of the watch
goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and
sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can't have any one of these
without the other, because you wouldn't be able to know what black is unless
you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with
black (Watts 17).
It is hard to find a writer who
philosophizes so deeply on the pure relationships reality has entangled within
itself. Stranger yet is the incisiveness with which he describes the distance
between opposites—summer and winter, love and hate, rolling a twelve and
rolling snake eyes.
The exhilarating crest and the paralyzing
trough of the bipolar wave established their tyranny over my emotions, and
mercilessly grew more variant as I first experienced college. Rising stress
levels, unstructured time, and the muse of procrastination all contributed to
mood fluctuations. It is a dangerous game to unwillingly roll the dice as my
mind does. Each ensuing turn either rouses me to hyperactivity, numbs me into a
fugue state, or places me on some part of the curve in between—descending only
to suddenly skyrocket or ascending to inevitable collapse. The Chinese
philosopher Chuang Tzu—whom I discovered in my new-fangled, collegiate pursuit
of knowledge—offered me a tale that runs parallel to the vicious circle of
mood. The legend has it that one day Chuang Tzu sat beneath a tree, and became
so relaxed that he soon dozed off. In his sleep he dreamed that he was a
butterfly. He did not know himself as Chuang Tzu, but instead as no more than
this butterfly. Upon waking up, he instantly regained his identity, but as C.
W. Chan interprets it, “He did not know whether it was Chuang Chou dreaming
that he was a butterfly, or whether it was the butterfly dreaming that it was
Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and the butterfly there must be some
distinction. This is a case of what is called the transformation of things”
(Chan). My case is the transformation of moods, of mindsets, but most painfully
of personalities. When the time comes again for me to slip away into the
doldrums or let loose with mania, the boundaries of my identity blur and bend.
It becomes unclear whether I am a sad man dreaming he is powerful beyond
measure or a happy man dreaming that his happiness has vanished. I continued my
search for words that could anchor me, tools with which I could pry off the
two-faced mask.
I have learned to ride the waves and cope
with the outcomes of the dice to some avail, but my studies and future career
ask more of me. They require an anchored, steadfast me, of which I used to only
dream. However, when I discovered Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” I realized
my best defense as a dice-roller is really no defense at all.
Battles, the horrors of
fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and
nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Looking with side-curved head
curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and
watching and wondering
at it.
(Whitman)
Instead of deflecting my emotions, I found
it easier to let them pass through me. In the act of channeling, I am greeted
by a fresh new optimism, a new outlook which Whitman also matches:
I believe in you my soul, the
other I am must not abase itself to
you,
And you must not be abased to
the other. (Whitman)
In my efforts to own my bipolar condition, to let it
do its worst and persevere nonetheless, I have also tried approach my disease
head on. Was rolling the dice truly my obligation, or only the illusion of
suffering? The book, An Unquiet Mind,
by Kay Redfield Jamison, showed me that transcending my dice-rolling could be a
gracious process after all. She writes, “The Chinese believe that before you
can conquer a beast you must first make it beautiful. In some way, I have tried
to do that with my manic-depressive illness. It has been my fascinating, albeit
deadly, enemy and companion” (Jamison 5). Wondering how I could possibly see my
disease in that light, I welcomed the idea that bipolar disorder is a
phenomenon separate from my nature. It is veritably a condition I must
persevere through, but it is not me.
My nature contains my bipolar dice game,
but also extends far beyond it. It is here that I currently stand, trying my
hardest to let the beauty inherent within show itself. The wisdom of Lao Tzu
allows me to see it. He said, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is
accomplished” (de Botton). I know now to trust the dice game, to welcome chance
into my life, with the hopes that the only person my disease will render me is,
in the end, its champion.
Works Cited
Chan, W. C. "The Butterfly Dream." From the Philosopher.
The Philosopher, n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2016.
de Botton, Alain. “Lao Tzu”
Youtube. The School of Life, 21 Nov 2014. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.
Jamison, Kay
R. An Unquiet Mind. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1995. Print.
Watts, Alan.
The Book; on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. New York: Pantheon,
1966. Menantol. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.
Whitman, Walt. "Whitman's ‘Song
of Myself’" Modern American Poetry. University of Illinois, n.d.
Web. 07 Dec. 2016.
