Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve. ~Max Planck

I remember in teacher training one teacher said I was not broken and did not need to be fixed.

I loved that. I am not broken.

There was a time when all around me saw me as broken and they all wanted to fix me, which is different than help. When you land in the mental health system the consensus is “broken.” The whole world tells you: You are sick.

What if those same people saw my condition as the mystery it is?

No one knows its root or cause. They can say it is a chemical imbalance. Brain scans show that. And it is good to know because the medicine I take daily creates a balance that gives me the pretense of normalcy.

But those who know me know better.

Normal almost sounds as flattering as average, and about as colorful as mediocre.

What if all those around me back then saw my affect as a mystery, my condition not as a problem to be solved but as a mystery to be lived?

Because no matter what they saw, it was a mystery and I did live it: voices that had no bodies, images without frames or depth, nothing could be touched.

Oh yes, I was a bit touched and I don’t begin to frame the mayhem that was my life on and off for 5 years.

But life is a mystery:  bliss of love and joy, pain of childbirth, beauty of a butterfly, how the moon waxes and wanes and intuition that is part of each and every one of us.

Life is a mystery. Faith works like a riddle. Hope settles the worst moments with something we feel and don’t know. Tomorrow always comes and if we’re blessed, we live to see it.

Schizophrenia still does not get a lot press. Oh I see commercials about depression. I see advertisements about bipolar disorder.

On Criminal Minds and Law & Order we meet the schizoids and guess what? They are crazy.

And so was I. I was so crazy I rarely spoke of the thoughts that made me so because then everyone would know.

Insight wears blinders. Douglas Brooks so eloquently explained there is too much subject. Do you get that? Too much subject means life became all me and everything else was an extension, a mirror, an echo, a voice, a refraction, a shard or splinter of a reality I could not see.

Yes life is a mystery.

And there is nothing to solve if we can embrace it.

There is nothing to fix if we see each other, whether or not we are well or sick, sane or not.

If we see the person in front of us as they are, even when that person cannot see self at all….if we can see beyond our biases and judgments we can embrace the mystery of self, in each other and when alone.

We can stop trying to solve things. We can find ease and peace, acceptance. There are problems. But life is not the problem.

The problems usually live within a heart and mind that argue with what is and only live the problem and forget the mystery.

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Editor: Kate Bartolotta