Have you read Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin? It struck two particular chords with me: 1) There is good everywhere; and 2) even when that good is so trivial, even when it changes nothing, it has its own intrinsic value. Process does matter, in its own right – not only results count. Being good matters, even if it doesn’t result in good.
I like these two chords that were struck; they play sweetly in my mind. I’m enjoying understanding such things.
I’ve expended a chunk of mental effort in the last seven years, since I became well, on starting to understand myself. I think I now know what I love about myself. And I’m working on being at peace with myself, although I’m discovering that this requires some processing of my past, of the past that made me.
My first decade of life was wonderful. Listening to the unmistakeable sound of the grate being raked out in the mornings, before I climbed down from my bed. Ashes out, a fire laid ready to warm the kitchen and see us through the day. Dressed in fringed beaded suede and moccasins, stalking solo through the woods: a field of wheat transformed into an open prairie, a woodland dell into my kingdom.
My second decade of life saw the onset of anger, powerful anger beyond the norm, anger that grew into the unremitting burden that swallowed up my third decade, my twenties. That decade tested and honed my strength, but it took a toll and its effects roll on. Because time doesn’t heal, not really. It dulls the sharp edges, and it provides an opportunity for you to work with what you’ve been given. It doesn’t make it go away.
So I recognise that depression shaped me, and is shaping me still. It’s taken me a while to accept this. Initially, the freedom I emerged into was staggering, and I didn’t stop to look back. There was so much forwards to be done! I didn’t want to face where I’d been, and at the same time every moment had to count. Life had become so rich – there was so much of it to be experienced – and I knew how precious it was.
Then came what one of my previous posts described as my convalescence. I slowed down a little to give myself time to get to know myself and, I thought, to heal. But what began to emerge then was more of a twisted feeling about the decade I’d lost, and about how this was going to limit how much life I could fit into my life. This meant that I started running to catch up.
I still want every moment life gives me to give its most. But now I also see that a slower, simpler life would be nice. Recently I’ve tried to use my six-weeks-on-two-weeks-off breaks from work to just stop. During the six I am carried along by the current, I am in the moment and there’s no time to stop, but I am not there mindfully. During the two I look behind and I look ahead and I look at myself. This is essential, but it is not comfortable. But giving myself space for the things I know to become actually known, it amazes me what I do know. Sometimes things pop into my consciousness waking me from the deepest sleep to find them just sitting there.
It’s perhaps true that I use new experience as a distraction, especially for those times when I feel unhappy or lonely. But I no longer feel as spread thin by all the disjointed lives and versions of myself that I have rushed to create since I got well. Maybe they have started to coalesce. Could this be? I can see one story now. I can see how all of the chapters of this one story have contributed their bit, leaving an impact just as people who touch your life and then leave it also shape a little piece of the way you are.
Some recent experiences have made me think carefully about the way I am. About some of the traits of me: my impatience, and my nutty belief that I can bend the world to my will.
Last night I was looking at her face, wondering how I would feel if no one had ever been to the moon. I’ve never really seen moon landings as having changed anything all that significant, beyond perhaps some Cold War dynamics. But I was wondering if I would feel different if I hadn’t grown up with the knowledge that we’d done that. If the moon was still a mystery beyond our grasp. Would I see humanity, or the earth, any differently?
I spent some time trying to disentangle this, establish cause and effect, before I wandered into the territory of similar questions much closer to home. Who would I be if I hadn’t experienced depression like that? Would I still be just as strong, and just as weak? Would I struggle just as much to be patient, ever, or would I be better at letting things be, letting them play out as they will? Would I be more able to accept things that I can’t understand, or instances where the world works against my will? (I have more than enough courage to change the things I can. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference).
I trained myself over a decade to try to stick to beliefs even if they didn’t feel real, because I couldn’t trust my feelings and I needed something solid to hold on to. It’s hard to un-learn that.
But I also want to focus more now on understanding others. John Steinbeck said that understanding each other leads to being kind to each other – that knowing someone rarely leads to hate, and often can lead to love. Because there is good everywhere, see? Understanding like this is powerful.
In conclusion, getting older is cool. Although we’re very inefficient, as a species: all things fall and are built again (Yeats?). We spend lifetimes building up all this understanding and then we’re gone, and most of it isn’t the type of understanding that can be passed on through institutions of family or education. Maybe the closest we come to capturing and transmitting some of it is through literature.
I must read more.
I like these two chords that were struck; they play sweetly in my mind. I’m enjoying understanding such things.
I’ve expended a chunk of mental effort in the last seven years, since I became well, on starting to understand myself. I think I now know what I love about myself. And I’m working on being at peace with myself, although I’m discovering that this requires some processing of my past, of the past that made me.
My first decade of life was wonderful. Listening to the unmistakeable sound of the grate being raked out in the mornings, before I climbed down from my bed. Ashes out, a fire laid ready to warm the kitchen and see us through the day. Dressed in fringed beaded suede and moccasins, stalking solo through the woods: a field of wheat transformed into an open prairie, a woodland dell into my kingdom.
My second decade of life saw the onset of anger, powerful anger beyond the norm, anger that grew into the unremitting burden that swallowed up my third decade, my twenties. That decade tested and honed my strength, but it took a toll and its effects roll on. Because time doesn’t heal, not really. It dulls the sharp edges, and it provides an opportunity for you to work with what you’ve been given. It doesn’t make it go away.
So I recognise that depression shaped me, and is shaping me still. It’s taken me a while to accept this. Initially, the freedom I emerged into was staggering, and I didn’t stop to look back. There was so much forwards to be done! I didn’t want to face where I’d been, and at the same time every moment had to count. Life had become so rich – there was so much of it to be experienced – and I knew how precious it was.
Then came what one of my previous posts described as my convalescence. I slowed down a little to give myself time to get to know myself and, I thought, to heal. But what began to emerge then was more of a twisted feeling about the decade I’d lost, and about how this was going to limit how much life I could fit into my life. This meant that I started running to catch up.
I still want every moment life gives me to give its most. But now I also see that a slower, simpler life would be nice. Recently I’ve tried to use my six-weeks-on-two-weeks-off breaks from work to just stop. During the six I am carried along by the current, I am in the moment and there’s no time to stop, but I am not there mindfully. During the two I look behind and I look ahead and I look at myself. This is essential, but it is not comfortable. But giving myself space for the things I know to become actually known, it amazes me what I do know. Sometimes things pop into my consciousness waking me from the deepest sleep to find them just sitting there.
It’s perhaps true that I use new experience as a distraction, especially for those times when I feel unhappy or lonely. But I no longer feel as spread thin by all the disjointed lives and versions of myself that I have rushed to create since I got well. Maybe they have started to coalesce. Could this be? I can see one story now. I can see how all of the chapters of this one story have contributed their bit, leaving an impact just as people who touch your life and then leave it also shape a little piece of the way you are.
Some recent experiences have made me think carefully about the way I am. About some of the traits of me: my impatience, and my nutty belief that I can bend the world to my will.
Last night I was looking at her face, wondering how I would feel if no one had ever been to the moon. I’ve never really seen moon landings as having changed anything all that significant, beyond perhaps some Cold War dynamics. But I was wondering if I would feel different if I hadn’t grown up with the knowledge that we’d done that. If the moon was still a mystery beyond our grasp. Would I see humanity, or the earth, any differently?
I spent some time trying to disentangle this, establish cause and effect, before I wandered into the territory of similar questions much closer to home. Who would I be if I hadn’t experienced depression like that? Would I still be just as strong, and just as weak? Would I struggle just as much to be patient, ever, or would I be better at letting things be, letting them play out as they will? Would I be more able to accept things that I can’t understand, or instances where the world works against my will? (I have more than enough courage to change the things I can. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference).
I trained myself over a decade to try to stick to beliefs even if they didn’t feel real, because I couldn’t trust my feelings and I needed something solid to hold on to. It’s hard to un-learn that.
But I also want to focus more now on understanding others. John Steinbeck said that understanding each other leads to being kind to each other – that knowing someone rarely leads to hate, and often can lead to love. Because there is good everywhere, see? Understanding like this is powerful.
In conclusion, getting older is cool. Although we’re very inefficient, as a species: all things fall and are built again (Yeats?). We spend lifetimes building up all this understanding and then we’re gone, and most of it isn’t the type of understanding that can be passed on through institutions of family or education. Maybe the closest we come to capturing and transmitting some of it is through literature.
I must read more.