There are things that annoy me a lot. People mixing up principal and principle or e.g. and i.e. American flags touching the ground or continued being flown after they have reached the point where they need to be respectfully retired. Near the top of my list though is trash on the ground in national and state parks or just about any natural setting.
Gratisography at Pexels
At least I can do something about the trash on the ground. I mean I really don’t want to ring somebody’s doorbell and offer to buy them a new flag. So as Evie and I were looking at the striking scenery along the shore of Larrabee State Park in the state of Washington, I felt compelled to pick up what was apparently trash.
And maybe it was left there carelessly, but maybe not. And it may be by chance that I picked it up, if there be such a thing as a chance. It was a fourteen-page pamphlet titled The Beast within my Brain – written and illustrated by Patti J. Fairbanks. The beast that is illustrated represents bipolar disorder. I’m going to compare it to a piece I did a few years ago called Bi-polar Disorder is Insidious. It was before I got the “stay in your lane” memo that cut my productivity on the Forbes platform.
Each page of the pamphlet has a humorous illustration of “the beast”, which kind of looks like a teddy bear gone bad and a sentence about the disorder. What I really appreciate is that it focuses a lot on the manic phase, which is really the dangerous insidious part of the disease. Bipolar disorder can be misdiagnosed as depression. Not that depression is not dangerous. It can lead to suicide. It is just that it is more recognizable as a problem.
There is an upside to bipolar disorder once you have it under control. You learn that your moods are not always the result of what other people are doing. And conversely that the moods of other people are not necessarily the result of what you are doing, even when they think they are. Effectively using this insight is challenging.
So I will be reaching out to Patti Fairbanks and possibly adding to this post. The main lesson is that you should be sure to pick up the trash you see in parks, because sometimes it turns out to be treasure.
Peter J. Reilly is pleased to finally provide some original content exclusive to this site.