I had an interesting conversation with a friend today, who was openly talking about the struggle with depression for the last year or so. I used to "not believe" in depression, or at least not the way that many people frame it, but I do understand the state of it very well indeed. However, I still think it is a societal disorder, not a personal one. Now before all the depressed people get up in arms about why they deserve to be depressed, let me explain a bit.
As I see it, depression is not a disease in the traditional sense of the word, but it is something we can suffer from. Now, I am not excluding that some people are more prone to it than others, but I see it as more of a response to conditions, like an allergy, rather than a sickness. And, the current conditions that we have created, are those that are more likely to trigger the sense of depression in us, than perhaps we used to experience earlier.
And, I do actually think that we are on a spectrum of potential depression, with all of us able to experience it, depending on our environment. For instance, I have a theory that the more artistic amongst us are more likely to get depressed, because they are also more open to experience, and often less structured in the way they live their lives. They are "free thinkers" with less boundaries, and while this is fantastic for creativity, it provides a mental space of endless possibility, which translates into psychological uncertainty.
We are creatures of habit.
This isn't just in what we do, but also in the way we think, and we have evolved to close loops in experience, and our brain doesn't like a story without an end. Yet, the options in our life has changed drastically over the last few hundred years, and massively in the last hundred. Especially when it comes to the options we have.
Life used to be simple, with experience laid out in front of us. Whilst there was variation for some, most of us lived a pretty clear life; grow up, learn a trade, get married, have kids, build a house, die. But, it wasn't the simplicity of action that made it easy on us, it was that we also had a purpose in life. Most people were religious, or believed in some sort of after life, which meant that what they did on earth, amounted to something in the unknown future, something that was psychologically solid, even without proof. A person didn't have to "find their purpose", instead, it was assumed from their birth, and lived toward that end.
Obviously, I am simplifying and generalizing.
What this meant, is that the complexity of human experience was avoided, as rather than having to make the right decisions, most of the choices were taken away, and we had clarity on the path forward. Yet, today, most people have moved away from, or have questioned that imagined "heaven" in the future, and instead made the decision that purpose is lived, that it is experienced in life, and the result should be clear. However, what does that mean for us?
It means that we have to make conscious decisions about what our purpose is, and what actions we will perform. It means we have to take responsibility for ourselves, and find that purpose to our lives. This isn't a bad thing, but we have also created a massive range of options, and as we know, there is an opportunity cost to every decision, which means even when we feel we make a good choice, we are going to second guess ourselves. There has been plenty of studies over the years regarding things like choice overload where we are unable to make a decision from the range, or buyer's remorse, where we regret the decisions we made.
But, we are no longer in an environment that is simple, where there are only a few choices, as now we are open to a global range of choice on every factor that matters and doesn't matter to us. Whether it be the music we listen to, the car we buy, the job we take, the course we study, or the person we date - everything has options.
Including purpose.
And, I don't think that it is a coincidence that as we move away from religion, that people are turning to social movements to feel that they belong to a community, and are acting toward something that they find important, even if it is not important at all. There are plenty of social movements where the bar is extremely low to take part in, and the positive impact is largely non-existent, but it gives that sense of "I matter, because I am paying attention" to participants.
But, it is not enough.
It is like a person with an empty stomach, eating newspaper - it fills the void, but doesn't provide the nutrition needed to be satisfied, so there is still that emptiness, and degradation of experience as the body starves to death. And, we are metaphorically starving emotionally and "spiritually" for want of a better term. We aren't getting the psychological satisfaction out of our experience that we crave, so keep looking for more to eat, keep searching for purpose.
But, what we are doing to fill our void, is making decisions that solve complicated problems, when the void is actually a complex problem that is always changing. A complicated solution, an algorithm, can never solve a complex issue, because the issues is always in flux. What it can do is ease the load of the issue.
For instance, when a person is feeling stressed, they will generally take a break from what is stressing them to ease the load, but that doesn't solve for the conditions of stress. Similarly, when someone is feeling depressed, they will look to avoid their depression, by occupying themselves with activities that take their mind away from it, avoiding the feeling. Yet, this generally doesn't help for long, as it doesn't get to the core of the complexity, and ultimately adds to the conditions that caused it in the first place.
If you can't lift 100 pounds. You can't lift 200 pounds.
This is even more depressing, isn't it? And at some point, it becomes unavoidable, meaning that there is no escape, no more distractions to take the mind away and all there is left, is to face it. But, now it is a mountain, not a molehill, and if the molehill was too much to face, facing the mountain is an impossibility.
And, I think that one of the hurdles we have created in dealing with depression, is that we have been encouraged to identify with our feelings, to treat them as if they are "who we are" instead of something transitory that we are experiences. "I am depressed" instead of, "I am feeling depressed". It might be a subtle difference, but there is a difference. Rather than being the sky that experiences a changing world, we act as if we are the changing clouds.
Depression, like all human experiences, is a complex environment, which means that there is no solution to it, there are just strategies to manage it. For me at least, it is about building frameworks of activities that I can fall back on, that I can perform, no matter how I am feeling. Relying on the "I will do it when I feel like it" process, just doesn't seem to work for anyone I have ever spoken to about it, because when depressed, you never feel like it. So if the solution requires directed change, that change can't happen.
What I find interesting is that most people who talk about their depression, are somehow proud of it, which I put down to their identification with it. Getting rid of it, means losing themselves, so they want their feelings to be eased, not cured. For others though, they miss their old self, or they are wanting to be their future self, so are looking to release their current self from experiencing depression, so that they can move on with their lives.
I don't know what the answer is, but perhaps it is like the quote by Alistair Cooke.
"A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it"
To be a professional, it is about knowing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and hoe it needs to be done - And then doing it. And, to be a professional in our own lives, we likely need to know why it needs to be done too. Maybe we don't need a grand purpose that reaches across our lives. Maybe it is enough to just make it through the day.
Two million years of evolution as a human, based on survival.
We have created all these creature comforts for our body, but we have failed to build an environment, a culture, a community, a lifestyle, a world, that keeps us mentally healthy. It isn't just depression, it is a host of feelings that are causing people to act in ways that would have been considered outlier behaviors in the past, but are now the norm. We haven't evolved to be this way, we are reacting to the environment, like our body to an allergen.
Feelings come and go.
Like all things in life, they change.
Why hold on to one, over another?
Why hold on to any of them at all?
Ever reflected on why emotions exist at all?
If we are going to put so much importance on them, perhaps we should start there.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]