Depression is an interesting animal. For me it’s in direct conflict with the objective circumstances of my life (ie: I have a nice job, I’m healthy, I’ve people in my life who care for me) and the manner in which I’ve been raised (ie: do what is necessary, take care of yourself, soldier on). Given these two factors, a funny thing happens: I feel guilty about feeling sad.
There’s a woman I see on one of the buses I ride regularly. She has, quite clearly, something going on with her health; cancer, perhaps, given that one of the obvious things going on is that her hair is falling out in patches. There’s a guy who rides another of the buses I take regularly. In order to get around this guy has to walk using those arm-cuff sticks. Both of these folks have good reasons to be angry, unhappy, or sad. Am I saying they are? No. Am I saying that they’re happy? No. What I am saying is that when I look at the objective circumstance of my life I have no good reason to feel the way I do.
Occam’s Razor tells us, roughly, that of competing theories, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Applying that principle it becomes clear that the reason I feel the way I do can only be that I’m some how deficient. Follow the flow:
- Objectively, my life is pretty good (nice job, good health, enough to eat, decent place to live, enough money to entertain myself, people who love me).
- Yet, I still feel sad, unworthy, without value, lacking.
- So, without any objective cause for my mood, there must be something wrong with me that causes me to feel like this. I am broken somehow. QED
Despite lots of hard looking, years worth even, I can’t seem to find what’s broken. If I can’t find it, I can’t fix it, and if I can’t fix it I’m going to feel like this for the rest of my life.
All other things being equal, I can’t imagine anything worse.