Voluntary Madness
Page 27
Primarily, it means effort. That’s the simplest way to say it. Constant effort. We tend to think of happiness (and by happiness I also mean health or overall well-being) as a gift, and sometimes it is, a pure gratuity. But most of the time it comes about because you’ve done the work, prepared the ground to allow it in or tended it carefully once it has arrived. You have to practice happiness the way you practice the piano, commit to it the way you commit to going to the gym.
You don’t do it most of the time because it feels good to do it. You do it because it feels good to have done it. Or, more precisely, you do it because repetition lays the groundwork. It is the prerequisite for feeling good. Happiness is not a reward. It’s a consequence. You have to work at it every day.
Part of this, for me, means literally going to the gym. Being in good physical condition, getting my heart rate up for at least forty minutes, stretching, doing yoga and other strength exercises. This has a direct effect on my mood. When I’m terrified, when I’m really down and feeling like crap, I take myself to the gym. It’s the first thing I do. I don’t even think about it. I don’t debate or consider whether I’m up for it. I do it. Automatically. And every time, even if the workout feels like hell while I’m doing it, I always feel better when I’m done. If I go in at an emotional 4, I come out at a 6 or 7. Sometimes just the act of having accomplished something that is hard, that takes willpower, makes me feel good about myself. It may be the only thing of substance that I accomplish in a day, but it’s something and it clobbers the fear and the loathing and the futility.
If the question is, What’s the point? The answer is, Just do it. Doing it is the point. Don’t think. Do.
I have learned to apply that principle to almost every aspect of my life. So, for example, I don’t work at my writing because I love it. I work at it because I know that work, focusing and exercising my brain in very much the same way as I exercise my body, brings about a certain fulfillment and contentment in me that is lacking when I go too long without intellectual stimulation. Giving my brain something to occupy it tends to keep it from obsessing so much about my failures, or about impending disasters. I believe this to be true of all of us. Our brains are hungry, in constant need of stimulation, and when we don’t feed them enough, especially when we feed them the junk food of bad television and other mindless distractions, they turn on us and begin to cannibalize themselves for nourishment, much the way our bodies consume our own muscle and fat when we starve them.
My brain did this a lot while I was at St. Luke’s. It spiraled in on itself and tangled me in knots because I succumbed to intellectual inertia. I didn’t feed myself, and so I fed on myself. Once that had happened, it was doubly hard to pull myself out, and that is why so much of my effort in managing my depression is given over to maintenance, to keeping things going. In this, the emotional world mimics the physical one. It is far easier to keep going when you are already going than it is to start going when you have stopped or fallen into reverse.
I don’t often feel like working or doing something that’s good for my brain, but I try to push myself to do it nonetheless, because, as with physical exercise, I always feel better when I’ve done it.
Likewise, I often don’t feel like socializing, and I often find myself on the verge of canceling engagements with friends. Sometimes I do cancel them. But almost invariably I regret it. I resent the effort it takes to maintain relationships or meet the tedious obligations that family and friendships can impose, and yet I know that isolation is very bad for me. I know that my happiness depends, in large part, on human contact and intimacy. And so, as with everything else, I do it and reap the reward, or I don’t do it and suffer the consequences.
It’s all of a piece. Together, the pieces bring about the whole, and the sense of wholeness that is essential to staving off depression. The pieces and the bringing about are mine. It is up to me to tend to my wholeness. I do it or I don’t. That’s it. Sometimes I do well and sometimes I do poorly, but the point is, I do. The success or the failure is my own.
As for last words on the subject, as for cure, that’s a fantasy. You don’t finish. You continue. And you don’t do it—you are not forced to do it—because you are mentally ill. You do it because that’s how living works. Maybe depressives like me have to work a little harder at happiness. Maybe psychotics like Karen have to work a lot harder. But everyone has to work at it. Everyone has to try, even people who have everything. Probably they most of all.
I’m not saying that eating right and exercising, nurturing your heart and challenging your brain, will save you. It won’t. There is no saving, of course. You never “arrive.” You move. You get on with it. That’s the prescription.
In the end, and after a long, long trip, there’s only one thing I can tell you about happiness, about well-being, as I understand it. You want to be happy? You want to be well? Then put your boots on.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my agent, Eric Simonoff, for being, as usual, so much more than an agent; my editors, Molly Stern and Wendy Wolf, for their unflagging support, guidance and editorial acumen; Viking president, Clare Ferraro, who has been the kindest of fostering mothers; my publicists Jump Coleburn and Ann Day, who make it all turn out beautifully; and my friend and cohort Laura Tisdel, who also just happens to work at Viking. I owe my life, body, and soul to my beloved friend Claire Berlinski, who has done more for me over the years than anyone could or should ever have been expected to. I owe this and a whole hell of a lot more than I can ever repay to Lisa McNulty. In addition I would like to thank Bruce Nichols, Adam Bellow, and by no means last or remotely least, my family: Alex, Ted, Mom, Dad, and Kristen.