Let me first say that I don’t think avoiding depression is just a matter of having the right mindset and making the right choices.
Sometimes you can make a 200% effort to do your best to do the “right” things and still be at the mercy of relentlessly cruel brain chemicals.
I think it is both inaccurate, unscientific and unkind to suggest that you can just mindset and action your way out of depression.
Not only that, but external circumstances matter.
To be sure, positive external circumstances can’t 100% control depression. But it sure as hell helps when you’re in a physically comfortable environment, don’t have to worry about your own survival, have disposable income (so you can take a vacation to a warmer place or get a massage or hire a cleaner if that would be supportive) and are surrounded by people who love you and support you unconditionally.
Many of these aren’t only available to all.
So what I’m about to say isn’t some kind of prescriptive guide of what you “should” do to “beat depression”.
I’m way too humble about the reality of brains. Mine in particular. Even at my most upbeat, happy and energetic (which I often am), I always feel at a razor’s edge from mental illness because I am extremely sensitive and melancholy by nature.
So this is just one story of someone who is experiencing a dark season of life, and deduce that certain things have helped her to avoid depression this time.
The biggest thing for me has been this.
The way to cope with losing your sense of purpose, direction and ambition is to find out who you are outside of those things.
Because we humans are so much more than our so-called “purpose,” “direction” and “ambition” — as defined in an individualistic and capitalist sense (as they usually are.)
And this is a place of liberation.
When I don’t have some kind of grand “purpose in the world”, my purpose is to exist today.
To be alive. To breathe. To make my bed.
To order a sandwich and eat it. To notice snowflakes falling softly on trees.
To send memes to my bestie to make her laugh.
To cuddle with my sweetheart. To feel my emotions, to cry, to take walks, to read poems.
This is actually what real life mostly consists of. Our real purpose is to be alive, and here we are, beautifully and perfectly fulfilling it.
When I’ve lost connection to a capitalist-individualist sense of direction, then I get to…
… exist without direction, which gives me a great freedom.
Children don’t need direction to play. They just follow their own impulses (which often subvert adult “directions”) and have the best time.
Artists don’t need direction to create. Like, nobody was telling Picasso “mix this color with that color and put a brushstroke HERE.” Artists respond, once again, to their own inner creative impulse — moment by moment. Not unlike play.
When I no longer have ambition, I get to be free.
Free from the prison of my worldly identity and pursuits. Because, no matter how much value I find in work, I know I’m so much more than that.
I’m an animal. I am a dream-spark of my ancestors. I’m a river of sexual energy. I’m quantum potential in a meatsuit. I am one with soil, sap and sky. I am a tiny node in the sacred unbroken web of living beings.
All of these things are so much bigger and truer and deeper than anything I can do with “ambition.”
Let me be clear…
This doesn’t mean it’s been easy and delightful for me. It hasn’t.
Almost everyday is phenomenally uncomfortable and I’ll be VERY glad when some semblance of purpose, direction and ambition return to me. (And they will. Because life consists of cycles.)
But everything I’ve just mentioned has been the difference between “oh fuck, my life is just falling apart” and “I’m undergoing vitally important spiritual journey — one that is critical for my ability to come home to my true nature.”
This awareness has reminded me again and again… that shedding isn’t a loss.
It’s a revelation.
Disintegration isn’t a disaster.
It’s a cleansing.
“Unmoored” isn’t “lost”.
It’s a liberation.
And contrary to how it feels sometimes, the universe isn’t here to just fuck you.
When there is a night, it leads to day.
When there is a winter, it leads to spring.
When there is an uphill, there is a downhill.
Everything is unfolding for a reason, and there is a great unseen benevolent loving order behind it all.
This isn’t some kind of objective truth I’m proclaiming, but a personal belief I hold.
On purpose. By choice.
Deep rigorous optimism in the goodness of the universe is as close to something gets to a religious belief for me.
It’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay.
Because we live in a universe that loves us. And how I know that is that I AM a microcosm of the universe, and I AM love.
And that is how, despite a ton of discomfort, I have not been depressed.
This time.
Spoken as someone who will never hesitate to go out and get some prescription drugs if I feel like that would be supportive.