I began listening to Susan Cain’s interview with Tim Ferriss today and she’s talking about her new book, which is called Bittersweet, from what I understand. She spoke about something that resonated with me more than others, because a lot of what she speaks about I resonate with. They were talking about depression and she mentioned that one of her teachers or someone pointed out that what we feel may not be at the point of true depression. It made me think about How Emotions Are Made because we as a society haven’t defined a place that’s in between depression. Perhaps it’s not that you’re either depressed or you’re not. And I think what they talked about is why I’ve been hesitant to talk openly about supporting depression with nutrition based on my own experience because I’m not perfectly clear on if I was truly depressed. I don’t think it’s as black and white. Or maybe it is, and I just haven’t experienced it. Maybe I was stuck in that in between place. The place where you’re toeing the line of depression but you haven’t quite succumbed to its full darkness. Susan Cain talked about how maybe it’s not depression, maybe it’s a lack of beauty. She articulated it much better than I can at this moment but I interpreted it as this place where we’ve lost inspiration, that feeling of being alive. It’s when everything is gray. We haven’t been overtaken by the wave of despair and hopelessness to the point of not getting out of bed and not seeing a reason to live. Not yet, anyway. But it’s when nothing seems to resonate with your soul. I’ll have to listen to it again to clarify but it’s like Dr. Estes said, “expression is the opposite of depression.” We are desperate for that feeling of being alive. We want to see, hear, feel, experience something that lights our souls on fire. Something that allows us to see the beauty this life has to offer in the midst of its tragedy that so often plagues us. It was beautiful. Maybe this depression that everyone is feeling, isn’t all depression with its dark claws embedded in us. Maybe it’s not as hopeless as labeling it depression seems to make it. Maybe it’s just a lack of life. A lack of beauty. Maybe it’s the need for us to try something new, or create something beautiful, even consume something beautiful. Maybe art is significantly more important in this life than we give it credit for. It evokes something in us, right? It evokes feeling, it overwhelms us, it gives us life. Music, paintings, food, writing – there are so many things in this world capable of making our experience of life full, something more than what we’d imagined. Maybe when we reach over that line and edge closer to depression, we’re really just lacking art. Jordan Peterson has been speaking more about this as well. Maybe it’s more important than we think. Maybe creating art ourselves is more important than we think. There’s immense power in expression and if we can do so in a way that is vulnerable and tells the truth, maybe we bridge gaps and we make the world a little less lonely. Maybe what we long for is simply being able to free ourselves enough to let others see us for who we are. Maybe being seen is enough.
moodybreadcrumbs 