Jun. 2026: Simplicity

It’s funny that in my last newsletter, I was lamenting feeling tired and low for a long while, as very soon after that I had a brief manic rise. Technically not a manic or even hypomanic episode by the DSM, primarily because it was too short, but it’s a pattern that happens with me and it was surprisingly intense.

Early this month, the youth choir I accompany went to New York to perform. Just prior to going, I felt oddly panicky, argumentative, and gender dysphoric, so I took an anxiety med to try to help. I think what might have been going on was that my bodymind was feeling general agitation and irritability that my mind tried to attribute to some cause, but it couldn’t decide on a single cause.

We then went on the vans, and during the drive, I read a book on the practice of eldering in Quakerism. At one point, the book made me think of the Quaker value of simplicity. I then started to consider making drastic changes to my life in order to live by that value, and I became very excitable. I felt very ungrounded, and I instinctively put my hands on the van dashboard (I was sitting in the front) to gain a sense of stability. It felt as if a gust of wind blew me over internally. I tried to calm myself down, but my bodymind was overactivated. My senses became more hyperreactive than usual, and I struggled to keep myself from doing something that would alarm the kids sitting behind me. Luckily the driver of that van was experienced in medicine and understood enough of what was going on, but there was not much that she could do other than just reassure me that we would arrive at a rest stop soon. I then took another medication that I hoped would stabilize me.

It’s pretty common for me to experience brief periods of manic or depressive moods because of something spiritual. Something similar can also happen to me when I get really into a piece of music. The effects usually last only for a couple hours at most. But because this was a music performance trip, I think musical stimuli exacerbated the spiritual intensity that I felt during the drive.

So the day after, when we began rehearsals, I struggled to function normally in my role. I was feeling the music so strongly that I wanted to slow down everything to savor each note, making it very hard to follow the conductor. It happened before in the previous season just with a single piece that I liked very much, but this time it was happening with pretty much everything. I had to sometimes force myself to be not so expressive in order to keep myself in control. I already have a bit of a tendency to play like a soloist even in collaborative contexts, which contributes to musicality but can sometimes draw the audience’s attention more onto me than the choir. There are certain sacrifices you have to make if you’re working with an ensemble, such as being told by the conductor that you need to use the soft pedal for ALL of the pieces because the piano in a venue is too loud compared to the children’s voices (This sounds like perfectly good advice on the surface, but the thing is, the soft pedal changes not only the volume but also the timbre of the instrument). Keeping the beat is very fundamental to successful collaboration, so I had to prioritize that over expressivity.

Then, during the evening concert, I struggled still with getting too into the music with some pieces and feeling too detached with other pieces as if I were afraid of getting too into them. People still told me I did very well, but they didn’t know how hard I had to work to do my job. Towards the end of one piece, I glanced beside me at what I think might have been a small baptismal font in the church, and on it I saw a fabric doll for just a second or two. The vivid image freaked me out enough to cause me to stop playing for several seconds. I saw and sensed nothing else unusual, but the experience left me confused and scared for the rest of the evening. What happened? Was this even a proper “hallucination” given that it was just a flash in the eye? But it felt different from more ordinary illusions, such as thinking for a moment that I saw my black cat when it was a black backpack or other random dark object. The doll wasn’t in itself scary, but it was incongruent with the surroundings. I had not thought of dolls for a long while, so I don’t know why that image in particular would appear.

Luckily, the manicky stuff went away the next day — indeed, I was very tired that day, as if my mind needed to recover from the intensity. And my psychiatrist was not particularly worried, considering what happened to be simply some non-severe breakthrough symptoms that I managed very well. But I am a bit worried. Actually, some part of me is curious about psychosis and if I might experience more of it — it has long been part of my experience of mania in some way, but not necessarily in the sense of hallucinations and delusions. I had my first hallucinations when I had a major manic episode in 2024; since then, I’ve only occasionally experienced minor flickers of misperception similar to the doll incident. And I haven’t ever had delusions in the manner of rigid and false thinking patterns, but rather have become increasingly more flexible in thought, such that I feel like many more things could be true than I previously believed. Thus when I was hospitalized in January, I felt like other people’s delusions could rub onto me like chalk onto a blank slate.

So there is the curiosity about new experiences, but there is also the fear of losing more of my functioning. My experiences do seem to become more intense over time. I can sense that something is changing about me, and there are patterns that to me suggest an increasing probability of psychosis, even if it’s not fully here yet. I could be hypochondriac, but I also have been very good at detecting changes in myself and even identifying what they are. Before switching to my current psychiatrist, I found myself diagnosing myself much faster and more accurately than any of my clinicians, although I also doubted myself because of the complexity of my experience. My current psychiatrist is smart enough to see things that I cannot, but still, I feel afraid of what I might be right about next.

However, the surge in interest in simplicity as a spiritual value was not in itself a bad thing. It just happened at a very inconvenient time and was too emotionally intense for me to figure out how to properly integrate the experience. In the weeks after what happened, I continued to think about simplicity and how I might change my lifestyle to live more by that value. I haven’t made many changes though. I am somewhat limited by what my mother believes to be appropriate — for example, I argued with her about my desire to have a simpler form of smartphone that does not have apps that monetize your attention, and I felt unable to get rid of clothes that I did not want in my closet because many of the items that I do not want to wear are those that she wants me to wear. I am trying to rely less on frozen convenience meals and be more discerning about what I purchase for myself. But incremental change can be really difficult. I often find it easier to imagine running away and starting an entirely new life, even becoming something like a Buddhist monk, rather than making smaller changes to my current life.

There is one thing that I could learn from my mother. Her mind naturally inclines towards simplicity. She is intelligent, but not intellectual; aesthetically sensitive, but emotionally calm. Recently she told me that the reason why she doesn’t like to be creative is that she doesn’t like to use her mind, which baffles me. She tries to advise me on how I should not think so much or feel so much. My psychiatrist commented that that is like telling a fish not to swim. There is nothing wrong with thinking and feeling intensely. But the ability to intentionally let go of thoughts and feelings even just temporarily would likely benefit me. When I remember to, I practice meditation to offer my heart-mind some open space. I tend to get restless, though, as my brain seeks frequent stimulation.

The wave of spiritual yearning has settled in the past week or so. I don’t feel as much urgency to make changes in my life, which is a bit frustrating as I do want to make certain changes, but I suppose I must take one step at a time. Gusts of inspiration let me know in which direction I must go. It takes intention and determination to take the journey onward.

How important is simplicity to your life? Are there areas of your life where you want to live more simply? What are the challenges to doing so?

What inspires you? How do you go beyond riding the wave of inspiration and act on your ideas with intention?