After two episodes of schizoaffective disorder and six years of living with the disorder, I was deeply concerned with morality and its connection to my experiences. I knew I was a good person who had just experienced The Book of Job; however, I still had feelings that the illness was my fault.
This was a tremendous burden to bear because it meant I had to have done something incredibly wrong to cause all the adversity I had faced.
I thought if “everything happened for a reason and I just went through two episodes of schizoaffective disorder I must be a terrible person”. I thought I must have done something to deserve this.
During my episodes, I tried as much as I possibly could to keep to a strict moral code thinking it would help me to overcome my disorder. Having a good work ethic and good morals helped, but I was mentally rigid in the fact that I wouldn’t deviate or bend the slightest bit from my notion of morality. This mental rigidity carried on into the years after my episodes and I perceived the world strictly from a moral standpoint and it was detrimental in my recovery.
Only in recent years have I come to realize that morality is not some omniscient magical force; morals are rules decided on by human beings. Their purpose is to create positive results in one’s own life and in the lives of others. This new understanding of morality helped me to decide when it was okay to bend or even break a rule, and when it was important to adhere to the rules. Of course, that did not allow me to justify means that were immoral.
However, knowing I could deviate from my morals if there was no harm caused in doing so helped me to realize that I had flexibility. While I still always weigh the consequences of each action before acting, that is different than just strictly adhering to what I’ve been told. This helped me to cater actions to situations instead of applying a one-size-fits-all morality.
Moreover, I now understood why bad things can happen to good people. I used to have the belief that if I did everything correctly from a moral standpoint that good things would always happen to me. I think this vantage point was instilled in me from years of watching TV and movies where good things always happen to good people and bad things to bad people.
The thing I realized was that having schizoaffective disorder was largely biological which wasn’t my fault. The illness was not caused by a moral failure on my part. Likewise, joining a fraternity may not have been helpful, but that poor decision was not an immoral act.
I used to search my conscience for things I did wrong. I used to pray for forgiveness hoping that would get rid of the illness. The thing I came to realize was that I just wasn’t strong enough to overcome the adversity of schizoaffective disorder in its initial onset. The cause of schizoaffective disorder happening went beyond morality.
It was something morality couldn’t predict or prevent and it was something where my biology and circumstances were two scientific causes that came together to make a terrible thing happen to a good person. There was no omniscient retribution system that was paying me back for something I’d done wrong as a kid. I was not to blame for my condition.
Moving forward the thing I realize that morals did play an important part in my recovery. Experiencing two episodes of schizoaffective disorder and recovering from them was constant adversity and I constantly looked to my moral compass to search for ways out of storms I wasn’t certain how to navigate. The disorder was very disorienting mentally; therefore I had to rely on character to get me through the toughest times.
Having a good character with a good moral compass helped me to make decisions that created positive effects which helped me to recover from the disorder. Realizing that morality is a cause-and-effect system which serves people to create the greatest good for themselves and for others helped me to put my morals to better use. When I finally had an understanding of why morality is so important and why it works this helped me to better execute my morals.
Growing up I was told to do the right thing but I was never told why. Knowing that there are reasons why we need to do what is right helped me to understand how to do it better and it also helped me to decide upon what is or isn’t morally right or wrong. There are instances where there can be two correct decisions, however, when I knew the purpose for which I was making the decision (the desired effect), it helped me make a better decision as to which action would better create the desired effect. Finding a true north for my moral compass helped me to guide my actions with a purpose instead of blindly just doing what I thought was the right thing and hoping for a good outcome.
I also realized that morality works because it is a cause and effect system however, there are also times when things don’t work out. I learned that sometimes when bad things happen to me it might not be a question of morality at all or of how good a person I am or am not. I don’t feel guilty anymore when bad things happen to me when I did nothing to cause them; in the past I used to feel some form of guilt if something bad happened to me regardless of the cause.
For example, I can see now if someone rear-ended me in a car accident it had nothing to do with how good or bad a person I was that day. It has everything to do with the fact that that person might have just been distracted and wasn’t able to stop in time. The fact that they hit me might not be a question of morality at all. Maybe someone forced them into my lane at the last second or they skidded on a patch of ice.
The point for me was that some things happen because of cause and effect and have nothing to do with how good a person I am or am not, such as having schizoaffective disorder.
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