To cheer myself up, I like inventing quotes by Confucius. Here’s one of my favorites:
“You’re an idiot.”
-Confucius
What it lacks in irony and poetry, it makes up for with the perfection of reality.
But I digress. I remember being told in college that we experience all emotions simultaneously. That is to say, at any given moment, we have the ability to feel any emotion. Emotions are like different paints on a palette. Granted, I’m not an expert in either psychology or biology, by my palette seems to have an inordinate amount of blue paint.
Or is that an illusion? Have I convinced myself of a reality about myself that is not, in fact, reality? Is the concept of “depression” simply a concept. A construct that exists only because the THOUGHT of it exists?
Or is it a habit? A pattern of behavior, established at an early age, that becomes very difficult to break?
This is where people would tell me “it is what it is,” which is the worst phrase of the 21st century, and I know this to be true because Seinfeld was making fun of the phrase on one of the latest episodes of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. If a phrase or a thing has been noticed by Seinfeld, that means it is annoying. All Supreme Court Justices would side with me on this.
The best wisdom I’ve ever heard is this: if you want something to change, the first thing you have to do is accept it for what it is. I accept my depression for what it is. Sometimes it is standing in front of me. Sometimes it is standing miles away. I just realized I’m basically saying “it is what it is,” which torments me.