Chapter 3: I am not bipolar, I am tripolar.
Chapter 3:
I am not Bipolar. I am Tripolar.
Look at the stages in life from youth to adolescence, the teenage years, young adulthood until we become elders and tell me now if you were the same in each of those stages. If you are quite young and don’t know what I am talking about, I will explain with a beautiful example that enlightened my mind the first time I heard it.
My friend was travelling up north on a summer vacation and stopped at this beautiful place where a male artist was working on his art. The art pieces, as I imagine, must have been beautiful because his sensitivity was. They chatted for a bit and then he said: “I have been married five times.” Wow, I thought and yikes!!! However, he then added something really special and fantastic. He ended the phrase like this: “I have been married five times, to the same woman.” Wow!!! That is real love, and commitment, and intelligence and reality. Yes, we are not the same when we are young and beautiful as when we are not so young, but still as beautiful. Was he talking about the four seasons of life? No, I think he was going beyond that.
In a book on the seasons of life, Gary Chapman states how we all go through our springs and summers, falls and winters. I think in his case he was referring to time, the seasons chronologically. Spring— being born and growing up; summer—the young adult years; fall—our midlife; and winter—the golden years. At least that is what I assume because although I have the book, I have not read it. Why? I haven’t read it because I am TRIPOLAR. I get sidetracked between the desire to read it, buying it immediately and never getting enough time to read it.
Also, because I am TRIPOLAR, I read the index and the ending. Yes, I skip through it and then read the book backward. I check the subtitles and get a glimpse, an idea that then stays in my mind. Then my TRIPOLAR mind starts analyzing, unfolding the meaning it has for me, for my life, for my career and for others. Then my TRIPOLAR mind puts it into paper as a chart full of bubbles and arrows and it becomes a complicated but cool mental map that I can use to present my findings to anyone.
I did that, over and over, in a Mother’s Group I belonged to at our parish. We picked up a book and we read it together. Those are probably the only books I have read cover to cover, just because week after week, I had to present a synopsis of the chapters to the moms attending, finding ways in which we could relate the concepts written in the book to our own experiences and struggles. It was mostly relating them to struggles because the state of happiness is pretty much simple unless you are pretending and living a fake happiness. That, my dear friends, is the greatest struggle: to live pretending everything is fine, when it is not.
That is another trait of being TRIPOLAR: I look okay, I sound okay, but sometimes I am not okay. My mind and my being IS conflicted, insecure and in doubt. “Where am I going? What am I doing with my life?” The “is” in the last sentence is not a grammar mistake. Because my mind and my being are one, singular. My mind can be my greatest fan, encouraging me to be courageous and act, but will be putting me down at the first obstacle. The gift of the TRIPOLAR is that instead of letting the mind win a battle, you struggle with it until you master it and tone it down. Prayer, meditation, breathing slowly, and mindfulness are key to taming the mind. Here is another trait of a TRIPOLAR person. I am not only body and spirit. I have a freaking mouth and it functions on its own.
Yes, another of my characteristic TRIPOLAR traits is I cannot keep my mouth shut. I am getting better, or at least I try to keep it shut, but it overpowers my mind and my will. I am weak. In the spring of my life, I guess I wasn’t that shy in my family setting because my voice was strong. When I spoke, I definitely set some criteria. I had a mindset and a very clear and inflexible idea of right and wrong. I moved between the light and the darkness, between what was right and what was not, according to me. I held a monochromatic view in black and white, and nothing more than black or white. I probably kept that view over my teen years, during my years at university and during my first years in the workplace. When I came to Canada, my mind discovered the world is not only black and white. There are different shades and mixtures of colours. I discovered how black and white are actually the absorption of all colours or the reflection of all colours.
That discovery made my life move between different shades, between light grays and darker greys. It was only when pain hit my almost-perfect life that I started seeing the world in its full spectrum of colour. It was through suffering deeply, that my eyes could see the interaction of colours in the world around me. I don’t mean this literally. I was not colour blind. When you are colour blind, you might not be interested in looking at the world with different eyes. It is like when you unplugged the green cable from the back of the TV, the one that was with the other red and yellow cables, bringing full colour from your antenna port to your television. That was an older system before the new generation of USB and HDMI cables. If you are not familiar with that at all, you can Google it.
Old televisions did not have flat screens and they had a three- headed cable which determined the colours of the image. They were connected to the back of the TV. If you missed connecting one, you would cancel some colour for the image on the screen. If you did not connect the red, your screen would look like different shades of sandy colours. This is the way that colour blind eyes see the world. When the green and red rods are not doing their function, then the world of blues and purples, oranges and reds are blurred away. They can differentiate the colours, of course, but not like we do, in their full spectrum. This was happening to me, limiting my view of reality.
It is hard to be smart, gifted and to learn how to put feelings and sensations into words. I am not labeling but expanding their meaning which is one of the great gifts of my TRIPOLAR mind. What we experience makes us feel a certain way. The way we feel, generates a response. If you are kind, people might be kind to you– not always though, because some people have cold hearts. If you are tough, people will get defensive with you, and they may even feel hurt. In extreme cases, they can even go to the point of experiencing trauma. Six months ago, I did not know this. I took an online course on how to manage trauma in children, and what an eye-opener it was. What is traumatic for me, might not be traumatic for another person and vice versa. People are not weak, they are different, and here is where my mind had an AHA! moment.
Yes, people are not weak, they don’t have weak personalities. That concept is a bias that many of us, who are quite strong minded— TRIPOLAR—can use to define other people. So, if you think tripolar is not you, because you are soft, docile, understanding, slow to fight, I am telling you: You might still be Tripolar, but on the opposite side of the spectrum. Like a diamond that we can split in two triangles, one on the top, pointing up, and one on the bottom pointing down. This has been a huge lesson in my life experience. Guess what? The person that refuses to get into a fight is as strong-willed as the person who gets into the fight. It is not a matter of force. It is a matter of temperance. TEMPERANCE is the basis to understanding and dealing with a TRIPOLAR mind.
We don’t talk about temperance anymore. Here comes Google again: “Temperance noun -1: moderation in action, thought, or feeling: restraint. 2a: habitual moderation in the indulgence of the appetites or passions. b: moderation in or abstinence from the use of alcoholic beverages.” For this reason, is why going on a diet, adhering to an exercise routine, and even keeping a bedtime and sleep schedule is such a struggle for many of us. Our mind overpowers our will, whether we want it or not. These are a few of the struggles I’ve had to face, and I know there are many more people who have been diagnosed (or people who know someone who has been diagnosed) that face these same struggles. We are way too ignorant of the capacity of our own minds. Measuring all minds with the same gauge creates a distortion of our own reality as human beings.
Talking about it is not enough. I want to put all my TRIPOLAR principles into action. I want to uplift you, no matter where you are at. Whatever you do is amazing, if it is done with integrity, honour and a rectitude of intention, while looking for the common good. We are here to help. If your motives are dark, selfish, with the wrong agenda in mind and looking to divide, question and attack, life will take its own course and will break you down. The law of karma will take action because what goes around comes around. I don’t mean to be mean, but realistic. We as humans have a dark side. ‘Star Wars’ is not just a movie. It is a full biblical and principle-based philosophy. My TRIPOLAR mind has also sat down with me and analyzed the roles of the Jedi, the Force, Anakin, Obi-wan Kenobi, Darth Vader’s fall from grace and the relationship with Padme. This could be more than just a series that gives millions to Disney, MGM and the great networks. If only we could re-focus entertainment into education with a purpose other than just becoming rich and powerful.
End of Chapter 3