The great depression

 

11/25/2008

 

I don’t handle depression well.

Not my own, other people’s.

Moping about, moaning over how life sucks always turns me off.

I guess this comes from being part of a family of madmen and women; some part of my brain filters out the crazy diatribes, and forces me to focus my attention elsewhere.

The insistent groaning only annoys me.

This is not to say that I lack depression in my own life. But I fear getting to the point where I am so wound up by circumstances that I might find death as my only way out.

So I make sure to make my life simple.

This means avoiding the webs that trap people.

When I do get depressed, I start unraveling webs.

This means I do something, anything to start cutting through the threads that bind me: clean something, pay my bills, take a walk, do whatever it is I have put off that is creating one more layer of problems.

I just want to avoid finding myself under a pile of problems so overwhelming, I feel helpless.

It’s sort of like pealing an onion. You know there are layer after layer of problems each human faces, but if you can skin off enough layers, you might not feel so much more pressure.

Other people I have seen through my life have created their own misery by letting small things grow into big things by mere volume. They look around them and see every little thing go wrong, feeding the general perception that there is no point to living.

While I am the world’s oldest angry young man – full of rage at the world for being as unfair as it is – this differs from thinking that nothing positive exists.

There is always a way out, even if the choices are sometimes terrible.

Many of the worst traps we face can be avoided, and I have spent a great deal of my life weaving through the mine field of such potential miseries, choosing caution over immediate gratification.

I don’t take many risks for this reason.

It is simply my nature to be better satisfied with what I have than what I could have.

This is not to say I lack desires, or that I deny myself small pleasures. I’m just very careful to make sure that I don’t pay a big price for something small.

If I got to get banged in the head by life, let it be for something very worth my while.