Mania

In response to some psychology notes:1

"Symtoms of a Manic State:
1. Mood or emotional symptoms: Euphoric, expansive, and elevated Sometimes irritable, especially if the person's let down.2

2. Grandiose Cognition: Believe they have limitless abilities and don't recognize possible painful consequences if plans carried out. A flight of ideas - thoughts race faster than speech or writing. Delusions of grandeur.3

3. Motivational Symptoms: intrusive, dominating, domineering quality. Some engage in reckless driving, poor money choices, compulsive gambling.4

4. Physical Symptoms: need less sleep. After a few days mania slows as exhaustion sets in."5


Are we manic if we find ourselves frantic? If we feel compusions to be breathing and living - to keep our lives' rhythm to the beating of our hearts? Are we manic if we perceive potential as a black hole in the vast universes and mysteries of the human mind? Are we in mania - are we insane - if we choose impulsions over inhibitions, if we like to roll with the soul rather than be slowed by logical presumptions? If we like pens that never leave paper and free-flowing ink that carries words in creative splashes of expressions - not the straight, solitary confinment of words? If we find ramblings more romantic, more interesting than prepared speeches? If we're restless and young and feeling roudy with possibility so near and heated in our palms? If we stay up every night - too moving to sleep - so instead, we just dream? Are the poets the delusional? Are the wanderers actually the whack-jobs, the crazies the youth of jumping jack beans? Or is this less of a manic episode and more of the Mania, the Rise, of a generation protesting society's lack of passion?6

Are these the confessions of the desirous or the delirious?