The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish; the impressions remain flat and unconnected to the soul. Thus they are easily led by the opinions of others, are content to let their impressions be shuffled and rearranged and evaluated differently.
Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe
Weak as we are, compared to the health strength we are conscious would be desirable; ignorant as we are, compared to the height, and breadth, and depth of knowledge which extends around us as far as the universal range of matter itself; miserable as we are, compared to the happiness of which we feel ourselves capable; yet in this living principle we see nothing beyond or above us, nothing to which we or our descendants may not attain, of great, of beautiful, of excellent. But to feel the power of this mighty principle, to urge it forward in its course and accelerate the change in our condition which it promises, we must awaken to its observation.
Frances Wright
To have a sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitues self-respect is potentially to have everything, the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.
Joan Didion
If we ask ourselves what is this wisdom which experience forces upon us, the answer must be that we discover the world is not constituted as we had supposed it to be.
Walter Lippman
What does your conscience say? You must become who it is that you are.
Friedrich Nietzsche
As persons with a chronic, misdiagnosed, misunderstood and dismissed condition, our view of ourselves, our relationships and our place in both the micro and macro world is, perhaps, the most important information that we need to examine and share.
You will have found, in sharing your SOM journey in all of the previous threads, that you addressed this issue as it has manifested in nearly every part of your life. One of my favorite authors is Nietzsche, mostly because of his most often quoted passage, "What does not destroy me, makes me stronger." Even people who have never heard of or read his work, are familiar with this phrase.
Our survival or defeat in the face of our SOM is a dynamic experience.
Today I am strong and feeling positive. Yesterday I felt without resource or support. Back and forth, by measure and degree, does the journey with my vision move.
That vision is greater than my sight, more than my disability, and merely the place and time in which I find myself in this moment. Each day, every symptom, all the difficulty and nuisance that my SOM offers up to me is an opportunity to choose how I will live, the manner in which I move through the world, and a newly born chance to be the person that I believe myself to be.
What have you chosen?
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