For 51 years I’ve been known by my doctors, family, and friends as manic, depressive, schizoaffective, overly dramatic, extremely emotional (thank God for DBT), and sometimes quite eccentric — even bordering on beyond help. In all truth I was quite insane as defined by The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM). Yet my personal psychiatrist from six years ago even posed the idea that I may not have a mental illness at all. She felt I was possibly just an intelligent guy with an overly active imagination. Also, to note, she was also the Medical Director at my local hometown’s mental hospital. At this point I have to be completely transparent. To know me is to know I don’t hide behind anything, let alone a series of diagnoses.
I was recently watching the story of John Nash via the film A Beautiful Mind, 2001, starring Russell Crowe. While many moments proved so familiar to my own series of mind-bending madness and revelations, it was in John’s final speech which summed up my own life thus far. Speaking directly to his wife, Nash sums up his fascination of numbers, equations, and endearing love itself. Russell’s delivery was quite extraordinary:
“I’ve always believed in numbers; and the equations and logics that lead to reason. But after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask: ‘what truly is logic? Who decides reason?’
My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional…and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: it is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found.
I’m only here tonight because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all my reasons. Thank you.”
— John Nash as portrayed by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, 2001, directed by Ron Howard
(Right) John Forbes Nash, Junior (June 13, 1928 – May 23, 2015), an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, real algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and partial differential equations.
