Well said

This Saturday night, the Brainucopia is full of feelings, thoughts, and ponderings. I was looking for a quote that could describe how I feel about Facebook, somewhat believing that would be an impossible task. Turns out I was wrong.

We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.
— W. Somerset Maugham


Somewhere amidst the many quotes I found about all sorts of fascinating things, words uttered by people far more clever than I will ever be, was this one. It's near and dear to my heart not only because of who said it, but because she did such an astounding job of describing my life when she wrote about her own.

"I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been mildly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow."
— Kaye Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness


What I had really hoped to find was a quote about illness, the unknown, and uncertainty. Or, perhaps one about whether it's better to know or not know. Maybe one about a situation appearing to be headed from bad to worse. Thinking about it all made me wonder if I might derive any sense of relief from being able to say, "It was never bipolar disorder. My behavioral health was wrongly accused of offenses that were actually rooted in something much more socially acceptable but with far more terrible consequences in the end."

That's a lot to think about when you think about it.

Photo by me, last week.