When I was depressed, the idea of happiness was so seductive to me. It also seemed utterly impossible. I asked questions like this, hoping someone could tell me why they were happy. Hoping I could learn something that would make it possible for me to be happy. It didn’t work.
I don’t believe anyone really knows where happiness comes from, or even what it is. For me, right now, it is just not being under the water, moodwise. It means being able to feel good about the things I do. Unfortunately for me, my feeling good depends on positive feedback from others. Feedback that I doubt and discourage, but that I crave at the same time.
More than that, I think it means coming to appreciate that doing the things I love to do is…. what? Ok? Is enjoyed by others?
I worry a lot about what others think. I want to please. I want to help. I want to do these things by doing what I love to do. At times, I am certain that this is self-indulgence and delusion. Other times, I can see that people do enjoy it.
A lot of people say that you have to learn to be happy on your own. You have to learn to love yourself on by yourself, because only then will you be able to let other people appreciate you. I’m not so sure.
Humans are tribal creatures. We are dependent on being connected, and on being touched. When we are isolated, we feel useless. We question the meaning of existence. It is only in relation to others that we have meaning and use.
Depression cuts us off. Not because people suddenly hate us. It’s just that it turns a switch in our minds, and we can no longer recognize or feel any connections we may have had. Worse, any connections that do exist feel wrong. They shouldn’t exist, given the way we feel, and so we try to push people away, to bring balance into our worlds. People who haven’t been depressed don’t get that. Maybe they can’t get that.
People often tell depressed folks to do something for others. Donate time. Do for others. These things may work because they give us a way to connect. Over time, those connections will start to counteract our brain chemicals.
Happiness, I think, is understanding that you have a secure place within the fabric of humanity. You are not lost and disconnected. You matter.
When I was depressed, people told me that I mattered, but I never believed it. Even now, it is difficult for me to accept. I need constant reassurance. I need to be overwhelmed with matterdom.
In my recovery, music and dance have played an extremely important role. In the kind of music I play, you can not do it without feeling connected. It’s all improvisational. The musicians get into the common mindspace, and it feels like we are all reading music from the same page. We know what everyone else will do before they do it. It’s amazing.
In improvisational dance, the same thing happens. These marvelous formations form when the dancers are all relating to each other in….. I don’t know how to say it or describe it. It’s like how birds flock—they are all watching the bird in front of them and to the left, and when that bird turns, the next bird turns, and that’s how come they never crash into each other, yet they can turn and swoop as if they are one organism. The same thing happens in dance, except it’s much more complicated, because we’re humans. We can see multiple possibilities for connecting at any one time, and we choose them depending on what we are feeling. We get in touch with our own feelings at the same time as we become aware of everyone else’s, and we move from that.
Fluther is the same. Every question sets a lead, and people all follow like the birds in the sky, and we see our connections being played out before our very eyes. That’s why the place attracts so many depressed people. Fluther is a way to happiness—or, at least, not sadness.
Connection, connection, connection. When we are securely basking in the web that we spin together with everyone else, we can be full. We can know we matter. We can feel it. When we matter, the depression starts to lift. Your head can rise above the water. You can breath. And who know, maybe you will float up into the air. Just a little.
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