The Meaning I Give Life

written by Robin Mohilner

February 7, 2000

I was 19 years old, a little over 3 years after my first full-blown episodes of mania and depression, when I was given an assignment by my English professor to write anything creative.

 

One morning I woke up to a tapping on my window.   I heard raindrops whispering for me to wake up because they had a message for me. Thinking I was still dreaming, I opened my eyes and looked out the window. There was a large puddle forming at the base of the brick stairs; each drop created a ripple that spread throughout the entire puddle. The wind howled through the branches of the trees whose leaves had changed and fallen. The winds cried, “Listen and Learn so you may Truly Live.”  In the heavens dark clouds parted giving way to rays of light from the sun.  Something inside me rose from within giving me the ability to create meaning and purpose in the one thing that I could not understand—Life.

 

I shouted out, “Why am I here?” A voice from within me answered, “That’s a good question, but I don’t know the answer, what do you think?” I sat in silence and mumbled, “I don’t know.”

 

The voice replied, “That is why you are here.”

 

A raindrop cut in and said, “I am nothing but one drop. I spend my life falling; when I am ready to land I touch other drops and create a ripple that spreads throughout the world.”

 

Then a tree spoke with its mighty wisdom.  “I am but a tree, I have spent my entire life seeing and knowing everything, but because of my roots I have experienced nothing. Don’t become a prisoner of your roots.”

 

Tears rolled down my cheeks as rays of light from the sun parted the clouds.  I called out to the sun, “Is my purpose in life to grow and experience Who I Am?”

 

The sun replied, “If you choose for it to be.  I can’t explain why I am only a spec of light in an infinite universe of darkness and emptiness, yet I chose for my purpose to be that nurtures and creates life.”

 

Nature is the greatest teacher and representation to understand meaning in life. She did not have to speak to me through words in order for me to understand that I give my life meaning and create my own purpose.

 

I am on a quest for Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom; however I have no idea what I am looking for.  I read many books and can regurgitate many facts, yet I feel like I know nothing.  It hit me like lightening that what I was looking for was within me; this whole time I was going without. I asked my-Self, “What is knowledge?”

 

My-Self responded by saying, “Knowledge is whatever you believe it to be.”  Everything I had been taught up to this point disagreed with this definition. Knowledge is supposed to be based on facts, observations and evidence of truth.

 

My-Self said to me, “Prove to me that you exist.”

 

I said, “Easy, I can see, touch, and hear me.”

 

My-Self said, “All that you mention is energy, prove to me that you exist.”

 

I started to get frustrated and said, “I exist because I say so!”

 

“Thank You, I have been waiting for you to understand that all you are and everything you experience is a result of your beliefs.”

 

Then I understood that the meaning of knowledge is that I have to believe in order to know. I cannot understand or experience more than I can believe.

 

I was frustrated by not knowing Who I Was.  Tears rolled down my cheeks as I asked God to just make me into the person that I was supposed to be.

 

God laughed at me and said, “Baby, I love you.  I am not a genie, only you can do that.  Understand you will never know who you are, you can only BE who you choose.  Whoever you choose to Be will make me proud. I gave you the greatest gift in the universe—life. If you choose to let it pass you by thinking about, waiting on, and praying for your life to change, than do that. When you are ready to take action, I will be there on the sidelines rooting you on.”

 

I realized that I had only one option.  I needed to stop waiting for the world around me to change, and take action to change myself.  Instead of focusing on knowing, I focused on growing.  I opened my eyes to a life that blinded my eyes due to its brightness because I had been living in the dark.  I stepped out of societies shadow and declared who I chose to become and ran.  I ran so fast that I began to soar. I asked God, “I thought I wasn’t supposed to be able to fly?”

 

He replied, “I never made that law, but that is what happens when you accept limitations.  You chose to grow wings. Jesus chose to walk on water, cure the sick and raise the dead, it’s all interconnected.”  I then understood that life had no limitations and I could be whoever I desired to grow to become.

 

I was laying on my bed in disbelief with what I was experiencing and a bird flew through my window and landed on my chest.  It said, “love me.”

 

I looked at it like it was crazy.  I said, “What would you like me to do hug you and squeeze you to death, or kiss you and accidentally eat you?”

 

It replied, “Love is not in doing, it is in being.”

 

I did not know the bird. How was I supposed to love it?

 

It could hear my thoughts and said, “Love me the way you would love all life.”

 

I began to talk down to it as though it were below me.

 

It raised its voice as it said, “I am your equal, your life is not of greater worth than mine.  The reason you are unable to love me is because you have not chosen to love yourself.”

 

The bird was right.  I realized that as long as I judged and placed value on others that I was incapable of loving myself which would place boundaries on my growth.  I knew that I must change who I was so I asked the bird to teach me how to love myself.

 

 

It replied, “I already have”, and flew away.

I went within myself and the transformation had already begun.

 

My dog came into my room and sat down on my lap.  She asked me, “Mom, why are you crying?”

I looked at her and said, “You would not believe what I have experienced today…I have had conversations with the wind, a tree, a raindrop, my-Self (normal), God (normal), and a bird.

Each one has shed a light on what life means to me.  However, I am horrified by what people are going to think of me when I tell them what happened.”

 

She looked me deep in the eyes and said, “I need you to listen and understand me when I say it does not matter what other people think of you.  All that matters is that you are true to your Self.  You can neither prove nor disprove your experience. All that matters is that you share the truths and meaning that you learned today.  You would be doing the world a great disservice by not sharing your experience.”

I then realized that knowing and experiencing the truth and not sharing it with others was a greater punishment than never knowing the truth at all.

 

My dog said, “You need to let people know that they too can fly.”

 

Suddenly I fell to the floor. I was in shock when I opened my eyes to find my dog on top of me licking my face.  I thanked her for her advice and she slapped me in the face with her paw as she jumped onto the bed to bark out the window.  I could not believe that it was a dream; it felt so real.  My body felt as though it had been resting for years, but when I looked at the clock it had only been twenty-three minutes.  The tapping of the rain on my window must have caused me to fall asleep.  I looked out the window and it was still raining.  I looked in a mirror and felt like I had been reborn.  I was a completely new person with insight into things I that I had never thought about before. I had a deep connection with nature.  My dream was so real that I did not know where my meditation ended and reality began.  Then I remembered that I am the only one who can choose my reality.  I give life meaning.

 

 

 

This was written for an English Paper during college

I was not in a manic episode, but this reflects awareness that I owe to manic episodes.