Questions of Science, Science of Progress?

For most of my life I have lived with depression. As early as age thirteen I had a fixation on my own demise. This led me to find meaning in life at an early age. To search for the hard questions that has no answers, all the why’s of existence, all the why’s of circumstance. I battled on and have never let go of the vines roots that hold us to life, all the while reaching for the last fruit to savor its flavor that ever dangles in front of us. This lead me to study Philosophy, Arts, Religion, and in the end Psychology.

Each leads to the other as multiple points in a triskel, they are one in the same, yet completely different. Philosophy taught me that every answer leads to another question, Art taught me that beauty is all around if we choose to see, Religion taught me that God can not be pigeon hold by Bible/Arc/Temple, Psychology taught me that our reality is based on our perception of events, not by the events themselves.

Being a gay male also has taught me some lessons worth note; that its more important to be true to self than any thing else. Self reliance and self acceptance are necessities to continuing on in life. Life is the great teacher and revealer, she reveals all truths, and uncovers all lies; she grants experiences that we do not choose, but choose to respond to in various forms. Grief comes, happiness comes, each for a season. If Nothing Gold Can Stay then decay is also just another part of the triskel and has no more permanence than gold, one joined to the other from beauty decay and from decay new birth.

Life can be hard whether you weather a chemical imbalance or not. We all feel sorrow, and largely we run from it, we run from the pain. Innovation brings us momentary cures for sorrow: Religion, Ethnogens, Relationships, Anti-depressants, and Counseling. After we sober up, after the drugs are worn off, when our loved ones leave us, when the pills have no effect, when the session is over we are back to where we begin. Facing the daily demons and daily angels that brighten and darken our day, New age beliefs teach that there are only angels, that demons are perceived by fear, and when we embrace our fear we see the light of the Arch Angels of Love flow to us. There is truth to every lie that you will be taught, and a lie to every truth that you will learn.

I recently learned that Thomas Jefferson also suffered from depression, and that lead him to seek out answers in life, to beg the question till it bled no more. He wrote poems about suicide, and left them written as anonymous, he spent time in hospitals seeking relief, he tried antidepressants of his time. In the end he was left with himself. He chose what he thought was right with a heavy cost. His depression led him to seek truths in life, and those truths changed the face of our nation. It brings me hope to know that its often the hard times in life that bring about the most beautiful of all creations.

In Bible College an Old friend Stacey used to say to me that for as low as you can go emotionally, so can you find comfort in knowing that the opposite is also true. We must know the dark to appreciate the light in other words, for as much as we know one, do we have the capacity to know the other. Other names come to mind and how time has weathered on their souls, Anna, Jennifer. Weather can leave some harsh marks, but those marks are also seen as beautiful marks. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, that Pain was “God’s megaphone to a deaf world,” he also wrote that pain acted as God’s chisel to bring about the beauty in our lives molding us to become more than we were. Later in life he lost his wife to cancer and made the statement “I pray to change, not God, but myself.”

When in the midst of a depressive episode we loose sight of others and become self focused, sometimes to the point of peril, when we are able to lift our heads again and realize that we are not alone in our grief, that as REM sings, “Every body hurts, sometimes.” I’m learning in life that the path to healing is a road without end, but we need not worry about the end, just about where we are on the path today, and move on. To remember those around us and how they strengthen us without knowing it. Remember my comrades that in depression we dance, we move, we learn, sometimes the steps are the same steps, but the location has changed without us knowing, we dance the triskel a spiral within a spiral within a spiral.

Namaste.