We refuse to bear consciously the pain of our contradictions/paradoxes/polarities and deny them, run from them, hide from them, when the simple solution is to refuse to take them seriously and laugh at them, play with them, enjoy them, live lovingly with them all the way. Schizophrenia is not much different than poetry, or other forms of art (And a lot of artists have allowed their schizophrenic tendencies to drive them mad), leading Carl Jung to conclude "Schizophrenics drown in the same water artists swim in." It is just two ways of looking at the same thing. Brilliant people box themselves in with their insight, observations and deductions. They make an ironclad case against the reasonableness of life and live miserably until they die at an early age. My sister Susan killed herself by--get this-- starving herself to death under the oversight of Hospice. Because she could not make any sense out of going on with it. Her living will stipulated no liquids, no tube feeding, nothing to prolong my life. "Let's get this show on the road!" She could not dance with The Deal. Zorba the Greek had no problem with The Deal. He was fictional, of course, but he speaks for a lot of us dealing with "The whole catastrophe," by laughing at it and letting it be as it is. Ortega Y'Gasset would say everything meets at the edge of the corn. Lao Tzu, and all the other old Taoists, would talk about harmonizing the Yin and the Yang, by bearing humorously (as Chaung Tzu did) the pain of the contradictions in a "The situation is hopeless but not serious," kind of way. We have to take life as it is, or not. Some of us cannot. Which is crazy because we all are only a simple perspective shift away from having it made. It is just a matter of "turning the light around." And dancing through "the dark night of the soul," no matter how long it might last.
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 