Facing Forward

I've been thinking a lot about depression lately, how to battle the symptoms, how to find the root causes and issues within the unique experience of each person. We become depressed when we stop giving ourselves permission to live, to simply be who we are. Our life spirit cannot thrive if we continually question it.

For some, this becomes a feeling of defeat and impossibility. For others, that feeling gets pushed away and is replaced by anger and rage, cynicism. But at the heart of the issue is often the existential question of "Who am I to think I could be happy?"

We begin looking for the answer to this by searching for our life partner, vocation, or "passion". But who are we? We are the person that gets up and lives or does not live the life that is in front of us. We are defined by what we do with today.

There is a time to hunker down, lay low, and rest. Fatigue and exhaustion are real things, and we need to take care of ourselves when we have pushed to hard. But when we are staying home, watching others live their lives on a screen, because we do not want to face the world, this is when it is so important that we do.

And we don't have to figure it all out today. Just get dressed, get out of the house, and do one thing. You don't even have to know what that one thing is when you leave. Take a leisurely walk through a favorite part of town. Go to a bookstore. Take a long slow journey through the isles of the grocery store. Allow yourself to live.

This may not get you out of the water, but consider it something to hold onto in the storm.