Happiness includes sadness not depression
Ive always found peoples perspectives on their own lives very interesting. how we chose to experience life is very telling on who we are to ourselves. i find it odd that in the west most people think they have to be happy.
but when you ask them what happiness means, they dont know.
what does happiness mean to you?
you must define it to find it. and sometimes you define it again and again. how you experience happiness changes. sometimes you think it is something and then you are standing a moment with that sinking feeling- is this it?
that is always when i leave a job.
i define happiness by choosing to be content.
my definition has always been very simple, am i content in this moment, if so i am happy.
- did you do what you wanted to
- if yes awesome
- if no then to it
wanted can then include anything. sometimes we are faced with challenging moments, and in those moments we will experience pain. but are we doing what we want, are you earning your pain?
sadness happens all the time. if someone passes you should be sad. it should break your heart and change your soul. being sad and having these moments are not unlike how trees form rings. each season is marked with a ring. each ring tells us what happened.
i never wanted to have a stationary personality. i enjoy letting life change me. knowledge changes you. feelings are knowledge.
the challenge we face is that often, in a world where we dont talk about feelings, where we think the non expression of them is valiant we dont process them. how are you supposed to know what you are feeling if you dont try to articulate it? how do you know if that feeling is good or bad or if you need help if you cannot even express having it?
suppressing feelings is not going to make them go away. that just makes you brittle.
its as if a person were a sponge that could absorb feelings. healthy feelings absorbed might change the color of the sponge when processed. but unprocessed feelings would get stuck. making the sponge unable to release the current feeling to make room for the next.
depression- is the act of holding on to a moment. sometimes we get stuck in depression because we think we should have been this or that. we should have acted this or that.
but if you dont process the depression into sadness, you will not get out of it. how do you get out of depression if you judge the experiencing of it? if you cant even say u r depressed then u cannot begin to fix it. if you cant even acknowledge the emotion, whatever emotion it is, how do you understand it?
which feeling stops us the most: shame
in itself shame is not a bad emotion. it is telling you something about yourself. “i did something wrong”. you might feel shame for things that are not wrong. in that case atleast you know that you feel shame, but this is not a bad thing so let us then examine why you feel shame for something that is not good. this enables you to self reflect on your experiences.
you dont need a therapist to meet yourself. u need urself.
if you feel shame and u reflect and then realize that you feel shame for something bad. then u are free. u did something. u feel bad. can you make amends.
one of the leading causes of suicide in men is the lack of understanding of how they feel. i believe this is what i have always related to. my understanding of my emotions is not as evolved as most women. i often describe it by saying:
“ my feelings are stuck”
i dont know what i am feeling. i need to talk it out, or reflect. this is probably why i spend so much time in solitude. i do not mess with my mental health. i am very happy watching grass grow. grass is fascinating to me. u step on it and it bounces back. it is an engineering marvel of nature.
there is something fascinating to learn everywhere. why would you spend time in an emotional state that does not make you content?
this is my large problem with people who speak about things like creativity and innovation and yet are creating and supporting harassing work environments.
creativity is the “play” of the mind. creativity happens when the mind is making mischief with ideas. and mischief is not harmful.
u cannot be making good mischief if you are too scared to make even a small error. all innovation is- is errors. it is the act of making mistakes to perfection.
why waste time on depression?
there are so many aides to help. we are seeing therapies like Psilocybin be researched again to help. there are meditations like vipassana that can help for free. art therapy, music. it seems comical to me that we choose to be stuck in these moments.
if you dont know what you are feeling, then try to find out.
there are alot of feelings that dont have a word in english. so write poetry. i dont understand how people in the english world have put art and culture into this “nice to have” category. life is art. art is culture.
if you dont have this, then what do you have left?
enjoy your sadness. light a candle. i love solomon burke for a great sad night.
