To break the ice in this blog, I thought I'd play a little game.
A game that introduces you to me, and how my mind works.
To me, there is always an underside to every statement. At least, "artistically crafted" statements. What's an "artistically crafted" statement? Basically anything I write. hah. Song lyrics. Poems... Conversational nothings. There is a statement's face value, and then its underside. Or multiple undersides.
Let's take the title of this blog, Let Them Take Pills. On first impression, this might remind you of Marie Antoinette's statement, "Let Them Eat Cake." Imagine though, that it is not Ms. Antoinette, but the pharmaceutical companies. They look down at us with disdain. They want to make money off of us. They invent illnesses that describe our distasteful behavior, and then make us take medications to cure these behaviors. Ha. Let them take pills.
But this statement can be interpreted another way. What if you don't know about Ms. Antoinette? What if you just interpreted it literally? Let them take pills. Ok. If someone wants to take pills, then they're free to do so. No reason to stop them from taking their pills. Let them take their pills. Truly, this is my personal opinion regarding pills. Live and let live. If you want to take pills, that's perfectly fine. I take mine, and I love them. They have changed my life incredibly.
Let's try another way. Let them take pills. Who? That group of people over there. The mentally ill ones. The ones who are crazy. They need pills. But not me. Let them take their pills.
Or: Let them take pills. Give them pills, because if we don't, then they'll "self-medicate." They'll smoke pot, they'll have promiscuous sex, they'll abuse their children. Make them take pills before they do something worse.
Or: Let them take pills. Huh? Oh yes. Medicaid. They give us disabled slackers free pills. We don't buy our pills. We take our pills for free. Yes. Let them take their pills. Lord knows, they didn't earn them. They're not buying them.
As you can see, you can shine a light on a sentence, and it shines back many different colors. Like a prism. In my opinion, a well-crafted sentence, or paragraph, or document is like a prism. It can be viewed in many different ways, by many different people, and it will mean something different to each person. Music can be like this too, or visual art, or dance. For me, the process of trying to discover many ways to interpret one sentence, or song, or painting makes my brain stronger. More flexible. And as my brain gets stronger, I become more open-minded, and also more resilient. More confident. More well. More in control of my recovery.
In closing, I would like to say also that we can view people this way too. Challenging! But we must realize, that each person is not only who he/she is at face value. Like a prism, or a diamond, there are many facets. Some facets are vulnerable, some facets are fierce. Some facets are very private and should be left in the darkness, other facets are hidden but brilliant when exposed. We need to view each other flexibly... is that a word? I tend to make up words.
Yes. If we are flexible in the ways (more than one) that we view people, we understand them better. We are also more forgiving of their flaws. Because when there is a flaw, one only needs to shine the light in a different direction for another shimmer to happen.
This is one way to understand my idea that "I like to look at both sides of the coin at the same time." Perhaps impossible. Not even the sun can shine on two sides of a coin equally at once. But the human brain CAN. And even if it can't, it can TRY. And in that process of trial, it becomes stronger. More confident. More well.
*****
Disclaimer: I am not a trained therapist. Not an MD, not a PhD, not a PsyD. I am a peer. And proud to be such.
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