Depressed or just Disappointed

Warning: Some of the things that I write are merely as a form of personal therapy. So I try to protect the privacy of the guilty or innocent.

This article in CNN from the O magazine caught my eyes as its title was exactly what I was thinking about. Am I going through a stage of mild depression or is it not as severe. The article helped me in finding out the difference between the two.
The article states

Depression is a withdrawal from life. There is a kind of hubris in this withdrawal, as though being depressed were a way of saying, "this imperfect, difficult world is not good enough for me. Give me paradise or give me death." The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre pointed out that depression is like a spell that a person casts over the world to make it utterly gray and uninteresting. Then you can tell yourself, "What's the use of trying? Why bother to get out of bed?"

The disappointed person lingers, however painfully, in the middle of the story, even though paradise has slipped through his or her fingers. Disappointment keeps you connected to life as it continues to unfold and places an important choice in front of you. It informs you that time has gone by and things have changed since you first risked investing in a cause or a career or an intimacy with another person. Neither a utopian outcome nor easy success nor bliss in love is just around the corner. Life is more difficult than you thought. The question is, what next? Are you going to take on the vital forces of life, despite limitations and imperfections, or pull the covers over your head as an exit strategy?

Well, I have had shares of both regarding work and perhaps that is promising because I might still be in the disappointed stage. So the article suggests....

Finding empathy
What's needed to transform disappointment in a relationship into something livable in the present and useful for the future is that kind of empathy in which two people's selves take a backseat to a shared sense of each other's suffering. It is impossible to be defensive and empathic at the same time.

Empathy helps turn anger into sorrow. When sorrow becomes mutual, it begins to erase the lines drawn in the sand. Only then does the possibility of apology and forgiveness become real.

Ofcourse, I am extrapolating from love relationship advice to work (that shows my lousy social life at the present moment :D).
But still, it resonated with me as I had talked in a previous post about losing empathy.

Finally, regarding the advice for love I think I have yet to reach a stage of disappointment though something is afoot!