Kay Redfield Jamison: Learning to Love Our Jagged Edges

0

kay%20redfield%203.jpg My absolute favorite essay on depression is a piece Kay Redfield Jamison wrote for NPR’s “This I Believe” collection of testimonies. It’s about learning to love our jagged edges.

I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do. I believe, in short, that we are equally beholden to heart and mind, and that those who have particularly passionate temperaments and questioning minds leave the world a different place for their having been there. It is important to value intellect and discipline, of course, but it is also important to recognize the power of irrationality, enthusiasm and vast energy. Intensity has its costs, of course — in pain, in hastily and poorly reckoned plans, in impetuousness — but it has its advantages as well.

Like millions of Americans, I was dealt a hand of intense emotions and volatile moods. I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease. And, yet, from it I have come to see how important a certain restlessness and discontent can be in one’s life; how important the jagged edges and pain can be in determining the course and force of one’s life.

I have often longed for peace and tranquility — looked into the lives of others and envied a kind of calmness — and yet I don’t know if this tranquility is what I truly would have wished for myself. One is, after all, only really acquainted with one’s own temperament and way of going through life. It is best to acknowledge this, to accept it and to admire the diversity of temperaments Nature has dealt us.

Exuberance and delight, tempered by deep depressions, have been lasting teachers. An intense temperament has convinced me to teach not only from books but from what I have learned from experience. So I try to impress upon young doctors and graduate students that tumultuousness, if coupled to discipline and a cool mind, is not such a bad sort of thing. That unless one wants to live a stunningly boring life, one ought to be on good terms with one’s darker side and one’s darker energies. And, above all, that one should learn from turmoil and pain, share one’s joy with those less joyful and encourage passion when it seems likely to promote the common good.

Share this:

Therese Borchard
I am a writer and chaplain trying to live a simple life in Annapolis, Maryland.

More about me...


FOLLOW ME

SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER



Recent

February 23, 2024
Beloved
November 24, 2023
Everything Is Grace: Cultivating Gratitude From a Greater Altitude
June 11, 2023
Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You
May 20, 2023
Please Let Me Cry
February 16, 2023
Love Being Loving

Related Posts

4 Responses
  1. Thank you for sharing this wonderful article by Kay Redfield Jameson, she has always been one of my favorite inspirations and I admire her greatly. It’s good to be reminded of the good aspects of living with a mood disorder.

    Thank you for bringing so many useful and informative guests to my inbox, it really keeps me going.
    Sincerely,
    Teri Phillips

  2. Sherri

    Very well stated article.
    In times of depression, I have been able to look ahead thru the fog and realize that by God’s grace that I will come out better on the other side with more joy for what I have experienced – as painful as the ride is.

  3. I am also a recovering skin picker. And through something that happened to me, I was able to help another skin picker. I am working on seeing the rainbows and not so much the storms. If you wish to read my whole post on how it came about I was able to help her, it is dated December 2, 2016.