17. Different Perspectives

17. Different Perspectives

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Being bipolar, being diagnosed with the psychiatric disorder called Bipolar Disorder, means that the person is particularly susceptible to seeing life through their own fishbowl world.

We are all like that in some way, if you want to think philosophically. We can only see and experience the world from our own "person/place/thing" consciousness. That makes each of us like a single goldfish in our own unique bowl.

We don't necessarily need to know what is going on on the other side of the world, though sometimes these days we might. Our fish bowl is our world, Internet connection or not.

Our fish bowl holds all the life experiences we've known, the emotions and deductions learned from those experiences, the way we have lived our lives and the culture within which we have been living it..

There's a lot to this fishbowl" concept of the world.


My point is that you can never know for sure what's happening with the other guy and his fish bowl. All humans carry too much stress these days. We all eventually have to "blow" in some manner to get over it, past it, and on with our lives. I'm just saying, you never know what the gentleman, or would-be rapper, you pass on the street feels unless you have walked many miles in his moccasins.

My moccasins are bipolar, and what is normal for me is not normal for you. We walk the same paths daily. We cover the same emotional ground. If you looked in my eyes, you would not see my bipolar disorder symptoms. Most of the time my emotions are hidden, and under my control.

But in a way, we're the same, bipolar or normal. What is normal anyhow, and who should judge? You have the same irritating elements in your fish bowl that I do: family problems, money problems, time problems, dreams yet to come true. It's just that my fishbowl of a world is set at a different intensity, and at a different unpredictable pace of emotions, making my life seem like a roller coaster life of ups and downs--high highs and low lows. But you can't tell by looking on the outside.

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