The Hardest Part

Posted on March 19, 2009 in Mania Writing/Darkness

The hardest part of mania is the grandiosity, the overconfidence in your brilliance. Of course, it doesn’t feel so bad at the time. When you have the insight that is going to change the 21st century, your sense of worth increases exponentially. Others must acknowledge you as a prophet, the One whose advice and observations they must closely study. There’s a sense of urgency in everything you do or say as if you’ve just taken a match to the Earth’s last remaining reserves of natural gas. Clearly that is something people need to get a move on for! But for some reason you can’t fathom, they aren’t impressed. They sit complacently in their chairs and don’t rise to seize torches and bear the flames for the enlightenment of the species. There’s a fire burning inside of you – can’t they see that? Can’t they at least smell the smoke? Are they frogs adrift in a pot of water that is being slowly brought to a boil and are they going to die because they won’t jump while they can? You have an ember – yea more than an ember, a flame – yet they cannot be ignited any more than the sandstone that surrounds the coal. What is wrong with them, why don’t they see? You do what you can: you write poems & deliver them, you declaim your thoughts in groups, and you blog about them — everything in the expectation that what you have discovered will make our world a star that they will see on planets orbiting the farthest stars of Orion. Their indifference is like wet kelp thrown on a beach fire. You end up fuming — a lobster cooked to fury, a clam roasted until it opens its jaw to scream, a potato baked until it explodes. Why don’t they listen? And why, when it is all over, do they run away?

This is an exercise from [amazonify]1587613190::text::::Writing Through the Darkness: Easing Your Depression with Paper and Pen[/amazonify]