A Fertile Chiaroscuro

Article

I was in reality confining myself to a narcissistic prison, and preventing myself from loving and being loved.

I pledged, with an intensity I’d never known before, to do whatever I could to open my heart to my child, as well as my wife. I started a regimen of individual psychotherapy and medication. During the ensuing months, the war in my head occasionally calmed to where I could quietly survey the destruction and envision its cessation.

One morning, just after Una had turned three, I was reading William Blake and came across this passage: “Mutual Forgiveness of Each Vice / Such are the Gates of Paradise.” I understood that forgiveness need not be simply the letting go of anger; it can also be a way of experiencing beauty and wonder, the earth’s infinite, exquisite intricacies. In forgiving, I concluded, we no longer subject the world to our selfish judgments but instead expose ourselves to what exists regardless of our appetites: a reality now gloomy and now luminous, a fertile chiaroscuro. To trade the egocentric “ought” for the generous “is”—this is forgiveness.

Stripped of its dark powers, my bipolar has become more than an affliction. I can see it now as indispensable in the shaping of my identity—the root cause of my flaws, yes, but also the source of my productive sensibilities: my love of contemplation, my honesty about life’s troubles, my willingness to endure confusion and discover solutions.