Friday, October 28, 2005

Happy?

About a year ago I attended meetings to support those with bi-polar disease and depression. Though raw and troubled, the people made me think about important things.

Lately, I have been thinking of one man in particular. When he came to meetings, the ravages of his disease were visible and palpable. It was all he could do to sit for the duration of the meeting without becoming agitated and hostile. But in a strange, yet gentlemanly way, he was able to detect his boundaries (very hard for a bipolar) and left when it became too much for him. It sounds sad, but it appeared from my unprofessional observations that it was his way of separating for his health and others. He was intelligent, well read, older and hanging by the chemical threads of his latest brew of meds.

One evening, he asked if anyone in the group was happy. He asked, "Will anyone of us EVER really be happy?" He was truly sincere. All kinds of inadequate answers floated across the table. I went into a typical Christianized mode speaking about the temporality of happiness and that it is joy that is possible. He left nevertheless after everyone's patronizing

Lately, I've thought about that question. If our goal in life is to be happy, we will be disappointed. But, he was asking for a crumb, something his problem had not allowed. It really made me think. He was very real to me---honest. And I think there were no demons to be cast out that night--just a good question posed by someone who didn't have or who never had the luxury of distracting himself with normalcy or tepid sanity.