Coffee House: Starbucks (Again), Coney Street, York
Drink: Latte
Cake: Rise & Shine Muffin
Rise & Shine. The name of today's muffin.
Well we mostly, eventually, do the 'rise' bit. As in get out of bed. But 'shine'? Now that's a significantly trickier trick to accomplish. For most people I'd say we do well when we are able to give the world our 'fair to middlin' performance. Putting aside the physical things that limit what you can do on any given day, the big variable is how well you're feeling spirit-wise.
So how are you feeling? Of course that varies from one moment to the next but usually it is possible to assess it over time periods of a morning/day/week etc. You might feel a bit low in the morning and perk up at night or vice versa. There's usually a variable you can associate with the changes, accurately or not, such as lack of food, exercise, the cold weather, too much gin etc. Having a 'reason' for feeling up or down helps to an extent as long as the mood swing isn't too large.
But what about when there doesn't appear to be any cause? When today is pretty much the same as yesterday but something has changed inside and you feel very low or very up. I'm not talking about a minority of people here by the way. I think I'm talking about all of us.
The trouble with labels is that they (by definition) put people/things into categories and associate common traits. That may be useful if it helps the people themselves and others to identify the beast and learn how to cope, hopefully reduce, the impact of it. But naming something creates a boundary to the categorised things which can mean that the person becomes the label and only the label. Not too surprisingly, many people will therefore avoid being assessed for, even associated with, anything which could be labeled as a mental illness. Self medication is the norm.
If you go back far enough, maybe not that far, people would be labeled as mad. Then it became a bit more scientific and discerning and labels such as schizophrenic, manic-depressive came in. In order to tone down the fearsome picture the terms painted in most people's heads, bipolar became more widely used for one of conditions identified. A bit like nut allergies and asthma, more and more people are diagnosed and/or declare themselves bipolar. The impact on their lives and the ones close to them varies day to day and year to year.
The trouble with labeling things that don't show on the outside however is that it can only ever be a fairly imprecise science. I remember talking to a work colleague a number of years back about her ongoing battle with depression and ended up talking about my mood swings, or in that case, the lack of them. As she said "you know, you might just be very sad". I was at that time but that didn't account for being down when I wasn't sad.
I believe we all are effected by mental illness to a greater or lesser extent, throughout our lives, some of us have their lives blighted by it. There may or may not be a cause of it and in either case there may be something you can do to make it go away for a while but ultimately it's part of life. Like death. It's part of the condition of 'being' but we try to avoid thinking about it too much for fear it happens to us.
An answer, maybe the only one really, is to live a life which interacts closely with other souls. And to try and appreciate the benefit that brings.
"I'm lucky to be here with someone I like who maketh my spirits to shine" Warren Zevon
