Meaning and Purpose: Part One

It’s a story I’ve told a million times before, one dating from a full two decades ago, but only now can I add an extra layer of insight to it. What happened was this:

Soon after I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, in early 1999, I landed a small gig writing on depression for a long since defunct website. The site paid me the princely sum of $20 to write four articles a month. I wasn’t sure if I was up to the challenge - I didn’t know a neuron from a neurotransmitter - but an angel in the form of Colleen Sullivan was most supportive. In no time, a gusher was flowing out of me. The website couldn’t contain me. Soon, with Colleen’s encouragement, I had my own weekly newsletter going, followed by my own website.

As I recounted, a half-year into it:

Writing is what helped bring me back from the dead. For me, it is a healing activity. If I were a basketball player I'd be shooting hoops, if I were a gardener I would be out with the petunias. Healing is about finding something that makes you feel alive and doing it. When I'm in full flight there is no time and space. The sun takes its leave, booming music falls mute, and the steaming hot cup of tea by my side is stone cold when I pick it up a minute later.

After six months in the land of the living dead, I was writing again, and really writing. I was still writing in the shadow of my illness, but I was writing. I was reclaiming my life, one article at a time. 

In one context, I had found my “flow,” a state of full satisfaction from being immersed in an activity. But any old activity wasn't going to cut it, not over the long term. I needed a reason for getting out of bed in the morning. My strengths and virtues needed to be recruited into my work and my work needed to be my calling. Thanks to Colleen, I found it. No more rolling rocks uphill. No more smashing my head on brick walls. My sense of a life inside death, of being trapped in my own present, had been replaced by an intangible glimmer, the prospect of deliverance, what some people call hope. What I had stumbled into was nothing short of a miracle - what I would later describe as a bedrock principle of recovery - a life of meaning and purpose.

If the name Viktor Frankl pops into your head, you may see where I’m going with this. The late Dr Frankl was a Viennese psychiatrist who wrote the classic Man’s Search for Meaning, based on his experiences in the Nazi death camps. I hesitate to draw life lessons from the extremities of his suffering, but I feel I’ve been granted a sort of license by my good friend and fellow mental health writer, Therese Borchard. 

Therese is one of the four women I profiled in my first book in the Bipolar Expert Series, NOT JUST UP AND DOWN. Depression has been a constant in her life. Soon after coming out of one particularly crushing and soul-destroying episode, Therese found both comfort and validation in Dr Frankl’s work. This gave her the strength to rededicate herself to her writing, not to mention her family. Trial and tribulation would later follow. Therese, fortunately, has a rare gift for incorporating the worst that life has to throw her way into her spiritual and life journey. At the time of writing, Therese was planning a 500-mile hike - a pilgrimage - on the Camino de San Diego - The Way of St James - in Spain.

 As Therese explained to me back when I was working on my first book, Dr Frankl believes that human nature is motivated by the search for a life purpose. “If we devote our time and energy toward finding and pursuing the ultimate meaning of our life,” she recounted, “we are able to transcend our suffering. It doesn’t mean that we don’t feel it. However, the meaning holds our hurt in a context that gives us peace. We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation.”

A life of meaning, of purpose. Eleven years into my life writing about my illness, I was granted the opportunity to reflect on this. The occasion was a talk I gave to the local chapter of a well-known mental health organization. At the time, I was serving on the board. We would be holding our Annual Inspiration Awards Dinner the following evening, and I had been on the planning committee three years straight. Over that time, I had been involved in the selection of a total of 18 Awardees. I can assure you, this has been one of the most gratifying tasks I have ever been associated with.

Think of it - a bunch of us sitting around the table having discussions about people we all look up to, doing things we all admire. A few weeks prior, one of my fellow committee members and I worked on preparing bios of our six current awardees. The exercise got me thinking - what do all these people have in common?

Let’s focus on our main awardee that year, Father Joe, our Inspirational Person of the Year. Father Joe is the founder of Father Joe’s Villages, which feeds and shelters the homeless, and provides for them a range of social and medical services. In San Diego, Father Joe is a legend, but he recalls a time when he was just getting started, a newly minted young priest who had taken a sacred vow to devote his life to God. And the first assignment he draws? 

Making peanut butter sandwiches.

Trust me - with bipolar, it’s very easy for me to connect peanut butter to God. But for the chronically normal? Well, it turns out that Father Joe made that connection through a lifetime of service. To the forgotten, the down-trodden, the outcast, those we turn our backs on - Father Joe was there. Inspirational? Don’t get me started.

Father Joe definitely had a calling.

How about you? I asked my audience. How many of you have a calling?

For the purposes of this post, I will slightly rephrase the question: How about you out there? You reading this. Do you have a calling?r

Go to Part II ...

John McManamy is the author of Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder and is the publisher of the Bipolar Expert Series, available on Amazon.

Follow John on Twitter at @johnmcman and on Facebook.