Depression
With all the madness and insanity in the world , Depression is a state of mind common in the social communities of man today. Most of our institutions are usually modeled from primitive institutions such as religion and culture which have a distorted perception of the world around them.
For instance, it is wildly believed that if you go to a good school, and study hard, respect your elders, your God and be a good person, when you finish school you marry a nice respectable girl.. You would be blessed with a good job, which will enable you to build or buy a nice home and raise responsible children since obviously you have raised a nice respectable family..
Most of us who have been down that road know that going to a good school and making good grades does not necessarily translate into a good job. We know you being a devout theist doesn’t guaranty a life without pain, we know giving your children good upbringing doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t partake in some shady activity at some point in their life. But then picture someone who believes doing all those things should guaranty him a good life on Earth spending the first thirty years of his life breathing and believing this theory, reaching his mid thirties with a first class result suddenly finding work hard to find, finding ladies not very compliant because of his limited resources. He prays to his God everyday but nothing seems to change, he has done all he can to the best of his ability to ensure success but still no show.. What type of depression do you think that person will be subjected too?
Depression is a tricky subjected, and a state of mind that comes when you have tried your possible best to control your situation but everything just keeps spiraling out of control. When you have been to a thousand job interviews but still jobless, when you have read as hard as you can but still fail your exams.. When you have no answer to a set of giving problems that have plagued your life.
Depression is brought about by a lot of things converging down on you at once but the main things that bring about depression is as follows
1) Dependency; We human beings are social animals, this has been the secret to our success and survival for thousands of years now, but it is also a great weakness when you look at it from another perspective….
You have a wife, she takes care of you, she cleans your house, gives you morale support, have your kids then one day suddenly she is tired and wants to leave, or she passes away. Or you work as a sales rep in a jewelry store, you are very good in promotion and pitching products, every sale makes you feel good about yourself, you are the best at what you do, and one day you retire. Or you are a soldier or an athlete, you have earned countless medals, everyone gives you a pat on the back and tells you how good your and one day you retire and you have no more games to play anymore and the crowd disappears..
In the case of the husband whose wife left him, has taken his entire life and designed it around one person, you need that person to feel happiness, you have spent sometime trying to build that security in another person. Unfortunately for him love, like every other thing changes with experience, you can love dogs today, have a near death experience from a dog and hate them tomorrow. Your perception changes with experience, so whatever promises anyone makes you, it’s a lie, even they don’t know what tomorrow will bring, why communication is very important in relationships. Anyway he has taking his entire existence and designed it around one person, so what is he expecting to happen if tomorrow that person isn’t there anymore?
In the case of the sales rep, the soldier and the athlete, their various activities was their life, that is all the live, it is their game of life, it is the only thing they know and now they don’t know how to be something else..
2) Negative Recognition; this means doing things because you want people to give you recognition for it and inflate your ego. Like getting into a certain field not because you enjoy it, but because the recognition people give you for it. For example, a boy painting a picture because he enjoys it, is not so surseptibole to criticism as to one who is only painting so that people can give him gratification. If he is painting and you laugh out loud and insult the painting he wouldn’t care, because it gives him pleasure to do that, but one doing it for recognition might throw away the paint brush. This is also why some people are afraid to speak in public, ridicule, ‘what if they don’t like me?’, ‘what if I goof and they laugh at me?”. Most people only want to give a speech so that people will clap at the end and tell them how they aced that speech and how wonderfully they spoke. But if people jeer and boo him off the stage that might be the last time he might ever step on stage even though he should know you shouldn’t talk to people to win approval, you talk to people to inform them. The same person who is having problem speaking in public would have no problem informing the same crowd if there was a fire outbreak, without caring whether they liked what he said or not.. You talk to people to inform them, if they don’t like it, that is their business you have done your bit.
3)Assumptions: the number one causer of depression, the assumption that your wife won’t leave you, or the assumption they would like your speech, or the assumption that most people are reasonable and will always see reason.. If you want to do something do it because you want to, don’t draw a painting because you assumed people will like and when they don’t or get criticism, it tears your world apart.
Mostly, what cures depression is when you finally begin to get the real answers to problems which you have and finally apply a remedy and find it working, when you have the ability to make things go as you want them to go. So with different cultural and religious institutions still a very much in people’s lives giving them misinformation about life and what is really important, depression is a state of mind that will remain in our society for quite a bit.
