Is literature a resort for the disabled?

[osho]

I do not name any here, but I have seen cases wherein when people have nothing to do particularly when they are physically wrecked, economically and socially ruined they resort to literature since writing is a personal and private affair and as long as one is psychologically robust one can continue writing, though some people with bipolar or like that too do write. Doing some other things or socially and professionally challenging do not come their ways. I am not generalizing my statements but there are historical examples to endorse this statement.

Sitting before a laptop and now we have many handy notebooks one can find it more comfy to do the writing stuff. To be successful in business one needs to be outgoing, salesmanship and writing is something you can do leisurely. Sometimes one can wake up in the dead of the night take to writing but other professions demand teamwork, timetable and certain disciplinary measures.

That is why I often feel it is literature, painting and music that can work for the handicapped. I am afraid if anybody in their disabled conditions may take it personally. It is just out of inquisitiveness as I have seen many examples of the disabled in our country doing some masterly creative jobs. Some people are doing it because they were considered misfits in their previous professions.

I apologize if it hurts anybody since it is an objective observation.

[Volya]

I think that sure, literature and the like provides an outlet or relief to people who are having trouble with the real world, but that's not to say that's why all people read.

[osho]

I think that sure, literature and the like provides an outlet or relief to people who are having trouble with the real world, but that's not to say that's why all people read.

I second your thought hundred percent and in fact I also feel it gives a kind of relief and appeasement when one is stressed out. Everybody has moments of stress and depression in life and it is only a matter of degree. Literature has often been an antidote or panacea in my case though I am not in this field because I am stressed out or in a state of distress. I enjoy literature both in moments of joys and pains. Of course when I become fed up with the people around, and in fact everyone does, it is in literature and particularly in poetry I take refuge and it reconciles me with all my conflicts with myself and with the rest of other things.

At times I feel we have some social spectrums who are depressed or psychopaths who feel the society they are in nonadjustable and of course they can find a kind of magic potion in poetry that can loll them into a fantasy for a while since the reality they are in becomes unpalatable.

[JBI]

I think we all in a sense are Tennyson's Ulysses - being wrecked or disabled is not necessary:

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

We are imaginative beings, good literature plays on our desire to go beyond ourselves. I do not need to be depressed to enjoy getting lost inside Sima Xiangru's Imperial Park, the same way I can walk around the Qing park in Chengde. Marco Polo proved as much - we are all mere adventurers, whether on our bed reading or on an elephant galloping through the jungle.

[osho]

I think we all in a sense are Tennyson's Ulysses - being wrecked or disabled is not necessary:

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

We are imaginative beings, good literature plays on our desire to go beyond ourselves. I do not need to be depressed to enjoy getting lost inside Sima Xiangru's Imperial Park, the same way I can walk around the Qing park in Chengde. Marco Polo proved as much - we are all mere adventurers, whether on our bed reading or on an elephant galloping through the jungle.

Interesting and enlightening comment.

[Charles Darnay]

I think your assumption is a bit of a generalization - but a generalization that was given validity since the explosion of memoirs and self help books hit the markets. Good literature rises from an imagination and the skill to frame that imagination in a way that others will respond to. Sometimes this can come from someone who has/had an infliction, sometimes not. However, there are plenty of people who do not have the imagination or voice, but had an experience that is marketable, and all they have to do is record it.

However, to suggest that the disabled/handicapped have no option but to retreat to a laptop and start writing is not true. Often, the people who let their condition "wreck" them (physically, emotionally, socially(?) ) make terrible writers, as they are unable to control their voice. Meanwhile there are those who suffer a tragedy or something of the like and continue to strive in whatever direction they want to - from art, to business, to athletics.

[cafolini]

There are many many disabilities. Being extremely poor is another form of it. Regarding the resort, why wouldn't it be of all kinds? It is the Internet that's the resort, and literature, of course, is any expression of the printed word. So it is there also, incidentally. The net is the resort for any kind of poverty. For a few dollars per month you can live a lifetime of learning, including entertainment. It is one of the greatest events, apart from the stuff of Graham Bell and Tesla's frequency transformer, for example. You name it.
Are you sure the author of this thread was supposed to be osho? LOL

[osho]

I am learning things from different
viewpoints. I do not want to assert I am rlght or wrong. I am looking at it through my own social and cultural tperspective specific to my own peripherial circumstances.

[PeterL]

For some disabled people reading is all they can do, but for other disable people reading is impossible. If you were to restat what you were thinking with that in mind, then you would have something valid.

[cafolini]

I am learning things from different
viewpoints. I do not want to assert I am rlght or wrong. I am looking at it through my own social and cultural tperspective specific to my own peripherial circumstances.

That's one of the best ways to do it when you are a genuine bandit like I am.

I would enjoy grabbing and pulling a nose like Eastwood did in Heartbreak Ridge. Now, with Dina in rehab, he still says "use your nose and make my day." Women do indeed wave the little flag of freedom.

[osho]

Awesomely revealing

For some disabled people reading is all they can do, but for other disable people reading is impossible. If you were to restat what you were thinking with that in mind, then you would have something valid.

I endorse your standpoint

[Delta40]

I get on my high horse about the mentally ill often being more creative than 'normal' people. It pisses me off and I see it as some kind of stereotype. I have bipolar. I'm not defined by my diagnosis and resent credit being given to it - because the unspoken statement is that if it wasn't in my life, I wouldn't possess such talent. Nobody would suggest for a moment my talent is based on my gender or the fact that I'm a redhead! What tosh! It's about me and who I am as a whole.

[stlukesguild]

I have to agree with Delta. I find it absurd to even begin to attempt to define "artists" as fitting any stereotype... whether we are speaking of personality, intellect, nationality, race, height, hair color, sex or sexual preference, political affiliation etc... Artists as a whole are made up of individuals of such breadth and variety as are individual human beings of any other group or walk in life.

[osho]

I do not mean creativity springs from a state of mental defunct or of any kind of disability. Persons can be creative in both circumstances. My focus is when a person is physically handicapped and has little to do and has fewer places to visit all he can do is squeeze himself into his littleness in a small comfy room to read and write. I know a limp who confine herself within her small room and has a small circle of friends and all now she does is keeps on reading and writing. She was recently prestigiously awarded for the kind of literary creations she had done. Proust did his masterly work of writing In remembrance of my lost times while remaining confined as an ailing person. There are so many writers we can give examples who were disabled and yet did marvelous jobs of writing some of the world’s best books.

[Darcy88]

I get on my high horse about the mentally ill often being more creative than 'normal' people. It pisses me off and I see it as some kind of stereotype. I have bipolar. I'm not defined by my diagnosis and resent credit being given to it - because the unspoken statement is that if it wasn't in my life, I wouldn't possess such talent. Nobody would suggest for a moment my talent is based on my gender or the fact that I'm a redhead! What tosh! It's about me and who I am as a whole.

I have to agree with Delta. I find it absurd to even begin to attempt to define "artists" as fitting any stereotype... whether we are speaking of personality, intellect, nationality, race, height, hair color, sex or sexual preference, political affiliation etc... Artists as a whole are made up of individuals of such breadth and variety as are individual human beings of any other group or walk in life.

I have to disagree with both of you. This might be wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativ...mental_illness) but it cites numerous legitimate studies which show a correlation between creativity and mental illness. I know 6 Schizophrenics and 2 of them are legitimate creative geniuses and 3 more are themselves respectably gifted. I have bipolar type 2 and I know for certain it helps me with my creativity. The only other person I know with bipolar type 2 is the overall most creative person I know. He supports himself by painting and making music and directing films and music videos.

When I'm hypomanic I'm simply on another level creatively. Sentences and paragraphs come out poetically brilliant with barely any effort at all. The mind quite simply expands. I see more and feel more and that more which I see and feel adds substance and beauty to whatever it is I am creating. Having bipolar type 2 is like living life as a literary character. When I'm depressed life is a constant tragedy, I feel like I stepped out of a Greek tragedy or a novel by Dostoevsky, and when I'm "up" I see everywhere such poignant truth and beauty that all seems infused with poetry.

Being mentally different doesn't make you creative, nor does being mentally normal mean you can't be creative. It can help a great deal though.

Also, though unrelated to this thread I have to say how I despise the term "mental illness." In many instances a mental illness is detrimental if not downright catastrophic, but in many other cases it can amount to a mere difference, neither positive nor negative. Risk of suicide aside (bipolar type 2 has the highest rate) there is nothing about my mental condition that I would change. I've had the depression for so long I can't imagine life without it, and the emotionally "up" portions of my year, which last anywhere from 3-8 months, have blessed me with an abundance of positive experience, not to mention allowing me to function at an above average level and all the praise and rewards which comes along with that.