In his final game with the New York Yankees, Lou Gehrig—namesake of the debilitating disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—said he was the “luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”
The mind is a scary place. And when the mind delves into the darkest of the dark, it can consume one’s life, because there is no escaping it.
But, the mind is also a powerful place. For a piece of adversity such as ALS to be thrown your way, to have the perspective on your life that Gehrig did makes a world of difference.
Neil Hilborn has quite the interesting story, and shares this story through poetry. He talks about the horrors of two ruthless mental illnesses, yet his demeanor is optimistic and his face lights up when he reads.
In his poem “The Future,” he speaks to the power of the human mind in being able to spin the most debilitating symptoms into the positive light they can shine in.
“They keep telling me that seeing things that aren’t technically there is called disturbed cognitive functioning,” Hilborn said. “I call it, ‘having a superpower.’”
A positive perspective can go a long way in helping disorders, but it is important to stress that something as serious as obsessive compulsive disorder and bipolar disorder—both of which Hilborn has—needs to be combated on multiple fronts, therapy and medication included (depending on the severity).
From his battles, despite getting that very help, he has experienced the lowest of lows. Hilborn expands on using a positive perspective to combat suicidal thoughts, an issue that is pertinent to an immense portion of the population: roughly 750,000 each year in the U. S., according to suicide.org.
In “The Future,” he describes these thoughts so eloquently as, “Like a glowing exit sign to a show that’s never been quite bad enough to make me want to leave.”
What keeps him from leaving? Positivity can expose the good that comes from the bad experiences themselves.
“When I’m down I don’t kill myself because then, the sadness would be over,” he said in the piece. “And the sadness is my old paint under the new. The sadness is the house fire, or the broken shoulder, I’d still be me without it, but I’d be so boring.”
In his poem, “This is Not the End of the World,” Hilborn articulates his deeply depressive thoughts when he emphatically exclaims that, “There are days, when I cannot find the sun, even though it’s right outside my goddamn window, when getting out of bed feels like the key in the doomsday machine.”
However, he uses a bit of statistics to get the message to people struggling with the same thoughts—thoughts whose power can come from how they make people feel so very isolated and alone.
“Whatever you’re feeling right now, there is a mathematical certainty that someone else is feeling that exact thing,” he said. “This is not to say ‘you aren’t special.’ This is to say, ‘thank God you aren’t special.’”
In dark states, the feelings of isolation can have a snowball effect. Being so open about very personal subjects to a wide audience—millions of YouTube views to start—is an honorable and remarkable mission. A hint of humor is what enables him to be so open.
“I feel best about myself when I can make an audience laugh,” he said. “I always feel the most centered and balanced when I can interact with an audience who are really enjoying themselves.”
At the end of the day, a positive attitude has a strong link with being comfortable.
“You have to find the places that make you feel comfortable and powerful and use them as stepping stones to the rest of the world.”
The rest of the world is what’s available to us all. Being stuck in dark places forces us into corners where we see no options, but a little bit of light goes a long way in finding our way out.
