What I Can Learn From Rand al’Thor’s Mental Health Journey

In September of 2022, during my read of Lord of Chaos, I wrote an essay called “Rand al’Thor, the Invisible Battle, and Me,” in which I talked about Rand’s struggle with the ever-growing presence of Lews Therin in his mind, as well as with his own trauma and Lews Therin’s wartime PTSD. Since then, Rand’s suffering and secret battles—with Lews Therin, with their collective claustrophobia, with the new sickness caused by Rand’s balefire colliding into Moridin’s—have all increased significantly. And although he is still hiding these struggles from his friends and allies, the strain is becoming more visible to those around him, as well as to the reader.

This is something I have observed and analyzed throughout my read, but last week a specific moment in chapter 21 of Knife of Dreams caught my attention in much the same way it did back in the chapter of Lord of Chaos that inspired the aforementioned essay. As Rand and his party are riding through the city of Tear on their way to the Stone, Rand observes the effects of his ta’veren nature on the passersby. An armful of bread is dropped on the ground and somehow every loaf ends up standing on end. A man falls from a second story balcony and lands on his feet, unhurt. As he witnesses these moments, Rand reflects to himself that not every event will be as harmless as the loaves of bread or as lucky as the man landing on his feet.

I wasn’t shocked to see this perspective from Rand, but it is the most starkly clear example of his mindset that has yet been put down in the text, and it really rocked me as a reader. More than any other moment in the series, this paragraph made me feel just how far Rand is now from where he began in The Eye of the World.

In the early days, one of Rand’s drives was to help people, especially those he loved. That was a core value of his, one that even caused conflict between him and Moiraine whenever the choice to help someone seemed to be in conflict with preparing for his destiny. Now, however, we see how much of a pessimist Rand has become, not only in the sense of always expecting things to go wrong, but also in the sense that he weights every harm as heavier, more potent, and more significant than any benefit.

He keeps a mental list of dead women, but no list of people he’s helped. He sees anything other than perfect, unquestioning fealty as a threat to himself and to his ability to win the Last Battle, while the support and advice from friends and allies is treated as suspect and possibly traitorous. And now we also see how, when confronted with his ta’veren nature, he sees only the potential for danger to those around him, dismissing the good almost without thought.

In “Rand al’Thor, The Invisible Battle, And Me,” I described how I related to the exhaustion Rand felt from fighting Lews Therin for control all the time. Having struggled with depression for much of my adult life, I also knew the experience of having all my energy taken up in a struggle no one outside of me could see, and which I often didn’t know how to explain to anyone, if I even wanted to at all. It was a profound moment for me in my read, when I realized that I related so deeply to this aspect of Rand’s journey.

Today, and last week when I first read the chapter, I find myself with the same profound feeling, because this type of pessimism, the weighting of bad things more heavily than good, is something that I only recently realized that I struggle with, but which has been part of my life for a long time.

Of course, Rand has the literal fate of the whole world resting on his shoulders. His destiny and responsibility is fantastical in nature, part of the Chosen One narrative that Robert Jordan was so interested in exploring and interrogating. But we humans often use the word “world” metaphorically, and in some sense, each of us carries the weight of our own worlds—our own lives, connections, responsibilities, desires—which can feel very heavy indeed, especially because we live in a society where most of us are raised to think of this burden as one we are meant to carry alone. Those raised as men are taught that it is unmanly or weak to seek emotional support from others, that they are meant to be solely protectors and can never for a moment set down that burden or ask someone for help in carrying it. Those raised as women are taught to put everyone else’s feelings and needs before their own, that they exist primarily to be of service to the family, in their workplace, and to society. Many people manage to internalize some combination of both of those narratives at once. And in the U.S., we say “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” while decrying social safety nets and services like food stamps and social security. 

But this isn’t what being a human is supposed to be. Relationships—be they familial, romantic, friendship-based, professional, and even social—are by definition about connection and sharing, and much of our current cultural conversation around mental health is focused on teaching and learning how to trust and rely on people around you, and how to be there for them in turn. After all, the original meaning of the “bootstrap” analogy was to point out how impossible it actually would be to pull yourself into a standing position by tugging on those little loops on the back of your Doc Martens.

Later in the same chapter as the above quote, Rand reminds Cadsuane that he is fighting a war.

Cadsuane appears to have some kind of suspicion confirmed by these words, as she replies “That’s what I thought.” Cadsuane seems to have realized what I think the reader has also realized by this point, that Rand’s distress and fear over his responsibility as the Dragon Reborn has led him to become, for lack of a better term, a control freak. In his desperate anxiety, he feels that the only way to have any chance of winning the Last Battle is to control everyone and every situation. The idea of someone going their own way, of an ally, even a liked and trusted one, disagreeing with his orders or choosing a different execution is terrifying to Rand. This is because such events remind him that even he cannot control everything. And if he cannot control everything, he cannot guarantee that the final outcome of all his efforts will be one that won’t doom the whole world.

Even for those of us leading more ordinary lives than Rand’s, it can be difficult to face the fact that we cannot control every, or even most, of the outcomes of our choices. That we can’t be certain to get hired even if our resumé and interviews are perfect. That we can’t guarantee, no matter how much we try, that someone we fell in love with us back. That we can’t ensure that tragedy will never befall us or the people we care about.

When my spouse had a very serious health crisis a few years ago, I found myself consumed by the need to control every aspect of our lives. I was even monitoring them constantly, to the point where I couldn’t rest for a moment, day or night, because I needed so desperately to pretend that I could guarantee their health and safety if I just worked hard enough. When I make a mistake at work or accidentally offend a friend in an argument, I spiral down a path of “if I had only” and “I should have known,” clinging to the illusion that I can control every outcome in my life, rather than accepting that mistakes and conflicts are an inevitable part of every person’s existence.

This mindset is an untenable one to live with, though I am far from the only person to attempt it. What I have discovered as I learn more about my own thought patterns is that this kind of focus on avoiding the negative only makes you see the negative everywhere. If that is what you are putting all your thoughts, energy, and attention into, over time it becomes, well, the only think your thoughts, every, and attention are on. The rest, all the good and even all the neutral, seems to disappear.

For me, because I have been engaging in this kind of thought process and behavior for many years, it sometimes feels like nothing good ever happens, even though I have a lot of wonderful things in my life, and many moments of pleasure and happiness. I am like Rand, putting a dismissive “Oh,” before the good. “Oh, I enjoyed my walk in the sunshine with my dog this morning, but then I remembered that stressful meeting I have later.” “Oh, I might have had a wonderful date with my spouse last night, but today they’re having a bad day at work.”

In both of these examples, I’ve let the bad take away from the good, even though the two have nothing to do with each other. The pleasant walk wasn’t secretly unpleasant just because I experienced stress later on. My spouse and I still have a lovely life together even when they’re having a bad day. However, at some point, I seem to have lost that balanced perspective.

When Rand thinks that there is “an ill to balance every good,” he doesn’t really mean balance. If he did, he would at least see the experience of being ta’veren as a neutral one. Instead, he is looking at the bad things that happen as though they erase the good ones. And I find myself wondering if he is bringing this same perspective to everything he does. If every death, every loss, every perceived failure is viewed as a mark or proof that he will not win the Last Battle, while every success and consolidation of power is merely what has to be done. There is no victory to offset defeat, there is only defeat and non-defeat.

I’d say I can’t imagine how Rand keeps going, if that’s how he sees his life and his existence. Except I can, because that is how I have come to see mine, too, without ever meaning to. Looking back on Rand’s journey, it’s easy to understand how he has ended up here. He has so much pressure on him, he has experienced loss, and torture, and stigma, and betrayal, and that’s not even getting into what the taint on saidin and his two wounds have done to his body and mind. I can empathize with his belief that he must become hard in order to survive the pain and dark deeds, because I, too, have stifled my own emotions like grief and fear in the belief they made me weak. I can empathize with the way he sees danger in every corner and a betrayer in every friendly face, because I, too, have experienced trauma that left me always on alert, always on guard against the next potential source of harm.

And like Rand, I live in a world full of those who would put their own advancement and pleasure above anyone else’s, a world where many people clothe themselves in glory or righteousness while secretly allying themselves with the Dark. In my world, they are Darkfriends only in a metaphorical sense, but in the end, it’s not really all that different of an experience.

I can empathize so deeply with Rand because I’ve been there. I think most of you, dear readers, have as well. And I think Jordan was also there, and that in writing The Wheel of Time he was exploring the experience just as I am exploring it by writing this essay. 

Each of us carries the weight of our whole world on our own shoulders.

They say it can be easier to give someone else advice than to take it yourself. As I move forward with the rest of the series, I really hope to see Rand receive advice and care from those around him, from Min and Elayne and Aviendha, from Nynaeve and Alivia, and even from Cadsuane. Advice that allows him to start seeing that there is still beauty in life, that it is possible to be strong and still grieve, that love is just as powerful and poignant as Darkness, if not more so. In the meantime, I think I might ponder what advice I would give Rand al’Thor about community and connection, about how to let your perspective shape your view of the world, rather than the other way around, and about how to let the people who love you protect you just as much as you try to protect them.

Rand is only a fictional character, of course. He can’t hear me. But maybe I will hear myself. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll even listen.