Relentless Self-Examination & the Loss of Genuineness

Posted on April 20, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder OCD Reflections Spirituality and Being Uncertainty

The Harding Truck Trail took one last broad left turn. Just before the silver Irvine Water District gate, I called “Stop!” to my little dog. Drake came to a halt as he was trained to do so and let me fasten his leash to the ring of his harness. We made our way around the gate post, then turned right down the hill to the [[Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary]] parking lot.

The thought that I had forgotten something ((I had already gone out without my cell phone)) came in a rush. Panic swept my hand to my pants pockets. I felt each in turn. The leash! Where was Drake’s leash?

If you read this even marginally closely, you will immediately see the absurdity of my condition. The leash was in my hand! I was walking Drake with it! I realized this, of course, and ended my panic then and there. But I cannot help but ask why this happened?

I often joke with the members of my support group about this kind of thing. It’s like that moment when you are standing at the urinal and you think to yourself “Hey wait a minute! Have I walked into the women’s bathroom by mistake?!” The only ones who have ever admitted to me that they feel the same are other people living with bipolar disorder or [[OCD]]. Is this experience of mine really that isolating? ((I think the confessional nature of the support group and the safety of that environment makes people more likely to admit to such things is all that is happening here.))

As a young [[Catholic]], I was trained in the practice of self-examination. You looked at what you said, what you did, and what you thought. You weighed it against what you had been taught as right. Everywhere you went you performed this task, in each moment, in all seasons. This was how you saved yourself from “the near occasion of sin”.

Somewhere along the way, I adopted a more liberated altruism. You did good because that was the emotion that rose up in you. You acted in a certain way because it was consistent with who you were. You weren’t a slave to church fathers who probably wanted you looking at yourself so that you wouldn’t be looking at them. Nor did you fall into the Randian kneejerk of being selfish for selfishness’s sake. By rejecting both, the relentless self-examination was replaced by an earnest motivation to be genuine. ((The Randian — follower of [[Ayn Rand]] — is little more than a negative image of an obsessive altruist. The genuine human being strives to acknowledge both her/his individuality and her/his membership in society. You don’t eliminate one for the other and expect to have a healthy mind.))

Yet it remains in puzzling ways. When it does so usefully, it serves as a check against creating agony for myself and others. But then there are these other times when it just clicks along so that the wheels can turn. It ambushes me in strange places, forces odd thoughts upon me. At the deepest points, I see a certain logic to each of the panics: You need to keep your dog on a leash so he doesn’t get run over by a car. Men and women stay out of each other’s bathrooms as a courtesy to each other’s privacy and dignity. The moments where these occur, however, are not genuine.

When they happen, I am a slave not to society, but to an odd sense of self. The way I deal with them is to acknowledge their drollness and move on.

This post is in response to Day 19 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Health Activist Choice Day”.