‘You created your own reality, you know,’ was what someone said to my son while he was battling schizophrenia. I think it was one of the most hated sentences we ever heard. I thought then that it screamed of a middle-class-problemless-spoiled-rich person. Undoubtedly, people who have homes and families and health and happiness can make their own realities. They can fix the issues they have the same way that we repair blocked plumbing and get upset when the paperboy misses their front porch then have him fired. This is possible, no doubt. BUT in the real world – like the one I live in, people do not create their own realities. Do people born into generations of poverty, those dying of starvation, create their own realities? What about people who suffer from seizures, those with no legs, people with mental illnesses. Do they get to pick or create their realities?
Maybe we can change the way we look at life. But there is only so much pain a life can handle. A patient with terminal cancer will still die, a person with seizures will still suffer them, a paraplegic will still have no legs and those with a mental illness still have sick brains. A person who thinks of taking his life day after day – well, there is no pleasant spin one can put on that is there? I dare anyone to tell a starving child somewhere out there in the world that they have made their own reality and that they can change life if they really have the willpower to do so.
“Because this what people are imparting to me every time they say that my brain isn’t sick. And I can tell you from experience that it’s the very worst thing they can say to me.” Unquote.
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Watch out for MUSICAL MINDS. This guest blog will appear on my site tomorrow, June 20.
