KirSa_EnigmASenior Contributor
Does anyone else want to learn everything and save the world? or is it just me.
Does anyone else want to learn everything and save the world? or is it just me.
I was recently reading about bipolar and came across this description of mania:
"Initially, he was tired all the time but soon his energy level “took off.” His friends described him as “crazy hyper,” and he was eventually hospitalized after breaking into a local library, allegedly to “learn everything in those books.” When admitted to the hospital, he was told he was having a manic episode.
This was so familiar to me.
When I become interested in something, or take on a new job or project, I often push myself very hard and become tired, or on edge. I invest everything.
After a few weeks or months of this, I get the sense I'm going to make a 'break through' or that I'm on the cutting edge of something profound.
I have SO many tabs open, books, and notebooks out... comparing and analysing to 'learn everything in those books' like the example above.
I've never broken into a library, but I do have strong memories of visiting a shelter of some kind late at night, and having the police called after taking a bunch of books off their shelf and skimming them frenetically for ideas/knowledge.
I'd been studying mostly independently for months - biology/chemistry and philosophy, and become overwhelmed with it all and had been drinking. (I'd also been learning the alphabet backwards and other orders [1,3,2,4], [1,4,2,3], etc, and solving rubiks cubes, while walking backwards on a balance beam - I called it 'multiple mind training).
I ran, of course... hid in the bushes while they looked for me.
Not my finest moment... but holy hell... that was so similar to the experience in the description.
I LIKE this stuff... except the drinking. It frustrates me that this isn't normal. I feel like the world is standing still.
I feel like this forum, psychiatry/psychology, and much of the world, is stagnant and oppressive.
Isn't wanting to 'learn everything in those books' a GOOD thing?
I don't want to lose the intensity and motivation to learn and grow. Sure, the overwhelm and drinking aren't ideal... so some tempering of the approach is needed, but surely that's all, right?
/rant
edit:
Here are some other phrases that I've read recently that I can closely relate to:
"I have a secret I can’t tell you, but it is so explosive it will expose the world for what it really is and I will be seen as the savior of us all."
"I was a man on a mission — a divine mission," Arsenault said. "I had to start a spiritual revolution to save the world."
"And unless people were with me on my quest to save the world, they were against me."
“I can save the world! No, I am a coward.” <--- this one hits home especially hard :'(
"When depressed, all obstacles will destroy me." —Kafka
"When manic, I can destroy everything." — Balzac
"Bipolar people are powerful machines, sometimes they feel they can save the world with their energy, other times they fall deep into depression."
/edit
