Now Reading
Dueling with Depression:  be more pessimistic

Dueling with Depression:  be more pessimistic

We’ve all heard that trite, sour platitude: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!” Making lemonade might work when you’re dumped (now you can go to that orgy!), or when you get a traffic ticket (you’re donating to the city’s infrastructure!), or when you lose your job (time for that career change you’ve dreamed about).

But life is so much more nuanced. Making lemonade is repugnant advice when someone you love commits suicide, or when a parent is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, or when you lose your job (I was working in my dream career).

And depression is immune to these banal quips. “It could always be worse!” It doesn’t make me feel any better knowing someone is suffering more than I am. I’d rather listen to more morose, authentic thinkers who embrace despair as an essential part of life.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued that life is a choice between suffering and boredom, and that existence itself is a cosmic blunder. “We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.”

Or the Übermensch himself, Friedrich Nietzsche, who lauded the idea of suicide as a means of comfort. “The thought of suicide is a great consolation. By means of it, one gets through many a dark night.”

My favorite quote comes from the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. “Act without hope.” These exclamations of hopelessness are ironically … hopeful.

I can’t count the number of times the idea of being a writer seemed futile. Those days in college when one of my stories was torn to shreds by the class and the professor. The constant stream of rejection letters filling my inbox. Watching my fellow classmates get published.

Hell, even now as I draft this article, sitting in a booth in the corner of an almost-empty restaurant, I feel despondent — I’m on my 10th cup of coffee. It’s gloomy and rainy outside, and this article is currently a muddled mess of sentence fragments, run-ons, and half-coherent ideas rattling around in my skull, all loosely held together on the computer screen with copious amounts of duct tape.

Life’s feeling pretty hopeless at the moment: This article will never get finished. I’ll miss the deadline. Even if it’s printed, readers will tell me it’s garbage. What the hell am I doing with my life?

However … if you’re currently reading this article, then I did hit the deadline. The editor didn’t print out my work and light it on fire in the middle of OUT FRONT’s office.* Hopefully I’m not getting messages from readers that it’s garbage.

But instead of running away from my hopelessness, I stand my ground and give it the finger, continuing to write, edit, and rewrite — all while violently punching my keyboard and drinking 10 more cups of coffee.

For me, it helps to embrace this pessimistic perspective with depression. I push forward without the expectation that things will get better, with the knowledge that we’re nothing but star dust floating aimlessly in a vast universe. That everyone we love will die and be forgotten. No, I shake my fist at the sky as the storm rolls in, knowing the deluge will sweep me out to sea.

In a phrase, f*ck hope. I’ll cultivate contentment out of hopelessness, foster fortitude out of depression, and try to live my life as much as I can until the deadline.

*Editor here: Mike, I’d never burn your work, buddy, and no one has dared say a cross word to me about the heart you pour onto our pages each issue. We love you, dude. Keep ’em coming.

What's Your Reaction?
Excited
0
Happy
0
In Love
0
Not Sure
0
Silly
0
Scroll To Top