Potential

As you may know by now, my favorite topic is adaptation. In accordance, this post serves to elaborate upon that very subject. In my opinion, the potential of any living thing is solely dependent upon one factor, and that is the level of their ability to adapt. Rather than trying to say that is a fact, which I am too young and uninformed to say, I will simply convince you by making references applying this theory of mine.

Throughout history, there have been people have been through extreme and traumatic circumstances (myself included) and yet proved to do well in life, even seeming to benefit all the more because of their past. At the same time, there are other people who have gone through a comparably easy life, but to them it was too much, and a result lived a hopeless life, or killed themselves to prevent that from happening. To this end, I believe that people suffering from mental illness do not have issues simply because of the illness itself- actually, I think that the majority of the problem lies in their inability to adapt. To take a step further, the affects of their illness do no directly result from a chemical imbalance, but rather, the chemical imbalance severally affects their ability to adapt, and as a result, they cannot. The schizophrenia, depression, rage, obsessions, etc. are all failed attempts to deal with the inability to adapt. When I look at my mom, this is especially clear. When we were growing up, everything was just fine- the trouble did not begin until we moved to the new house. Sure, she had some odd behaviors, and had something of an antisocial perspective of life (I'm getting this information from my dad, obviously) but as for mental illness, completely non-existent. Perhaps the transition associated with the move was the trigger for the illness- she wasn't able to adapt to the new living conditions. To top it off, there were other problems. See "hardships" for more information- as you may see many of these problems were simply unfortunate- there was nothing anyone could do.

When she realized that she could not adapt to the world around her- she coped every way she could, all of which completely failed and just "dug her a deeper grave". Other than depression and obsession, she eventually began to exhibit schizophrenic symptoms. These especially correlate with her inability to adapt. At church, she met people at church who appeared to be in need, so she let them live at our house. Some of these wrecked havoc, where others on exhibited odd behaviors, but all of which she could not adapt to. Her logic contradicted itself to this end, because it is common knowledge that adaptation is an essential part of life. As a result, she created a highly pessimistic fantasy world where everyone was against her, conspiracies abounded, Armageddon was just around the corner, and...well you get the idea. By diagnosis she is schizophrenic among other things. But intrinsically I do not believe that to be the source to be that- the root of the problem lies in her adaptation deficiency. I believe that if he ability to adapt outweighed the deficiency caused by the illness, It would have been as if she never had problems in the first place. I believe this because I, who possess her genes and as such have been diagnosed with similar, albeit much less extreme, illnesses- I'm able to cope with the world in which I am living, despite having such a traumatic past and dysfunctional background. I don't even take medication anymore, and I'm sure those who know me agree that I'm actually better off without it.

Stephen Hawking is another good example- he is considered by many to be the greatest scientist living today, and some consider him the greatest of all time. He continues to live up to these expectations, carrying on as usual, despite being 65, almost completely paralyzed, and (as a result) unable to talk. If he can carry on despite these circumstances, as well as any other individual in history with comparably extreme conditions, It should be clear that for them to do so can be attributed to none other than his strong ability to adapt.

It is my belief that criminals and "psychos" of all kinds result from having circumstances that outweigh their ability to adapt- primarily psychologically. But I also believe that we should not try to prevent this by stifling the adaptation process- eventually they have to start living life, and if we take that approach they will be overwhelmed by the shock when the time comes. Instead, we should pay close attention to each individuals actions, perhaps even go out of our way on occasion to give them a series of hands-on tests to determine the point at which their limit to adapt is reached.

To say that criminals and the mentally unstable behave in such manners because they lack sufficient ability to properly adapt to the circumstances pressed upon them- is a much more reasonable explanation than evil and crazy- not to mention far more optimistic. People who attach such intensely negative labels on these people do so because it's easier than going out of their way to see things from their point of view. The question "why did they behave in this manner" (to be generic) is inevitable, but since people don't want to think about such negative things they say "Of course they did because they're even/crazy." But this kind of thinking is close-minded and wrong.