It is often said that we take our health for granted until something happens to it. I think this is never more the case than with mental health. We operate on the premise that we can tell the difference between what is real and what is the product of a mind diseased. If we can’t, then the very ground of our existence opens up beneath us.
As I say that, I am conscious of the solipsism at the heart of Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum. If I think, therefore I am, what am I if what I think is not real? Thinking must be in relation to something outside me, connecting with what is, rather than my illusion of what is. The late, great Professor Hawking spoke airily of knowing the mind of God, but how could this be, when the human mind cannot know fully another human mind, and sometimes cannot even know itself? The Psalmist says: “When I see the heavens, the work of your hands, what is man that you are mindful of him?” This is the ground of human existence, that God is mindful of me; I am because I am thought of by He who Is.
