About Me

Rebel without a cause!

Thursday, January 29, 2009

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!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Try and do something... join an organisation, take up guitar... that sort of thing. The power of regular excercise to make you feel better is amazing. At least, that's what I would try when disappointed.

milieu said...

Yeah,
thats what I have been trying to do. Learnt a bit of yoga last sem and hoping to continue and learn some more.
BTW I read this quote by Hemingway which gave me some solace. :D

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good, and the very gentle, and the very brave, impartially."
-- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

austere said...

You'll survive.

Use the downbeat mood, rant, write some soul wringing poyetry, song lyrics don't you think?

No point in NOT making the most of things.


From the vantage point of my age advantage.

milieu said...

Thanks for the kind words..Austere and Mosi as well.

Austere,
Yeah ur very right that some of the best creative work comes out when ur feeling blue or very happy.
will think abt it..tx for the idea...but pehle apna roti kapde ka intezaam kar loo :D