Free Yourself By “Letting Go” of What You Can’t Control

A lot of advice along these lines does come across as 10 cent cliches, but the ferocity with which people attack it seems to hint at an absolute refusal to accept that maybe it really does come down to a choice. Depressed people don’t like any ideas that suggest responsibility and the possibility of getting better, because we start to identify with the depression. A much simpler saying I saw the other day was “if you’re not happy now, you never will be”. Meaning ultimately it is a choice and if you have a tendency to always feel down and depressed, getting the things you want, the things you think would fix all your problems, probably won’t anyway. Learn to be happy even at rock bottom and you’ll have the key to life.

Things like these are not saying you have no reason to be unhappy. I see the comment above that “starving people in Africa should be happy?” Not necessarily. The point of this type of thinking is that feeling like shit on top of whatever is actually wrong, does nothing to fix it. Of course lacking food or love or companionship sucks, but you can still choose to try to think about something else and be appreciative for other things. And I think people might be surprised, people in third world countries who don’t know if they’ll be eating any food today, probably generally do have a better disposition towards life than spoiled people in rich countries who get depressed over everything. You can’t miss what you’ve never known. They might have an understanding that somewhere else in the world there are people who live in houses who have all the food they could ever want, but having never experienced it for themselves, they don’t know what they’re missing. There are books and documentaries all over the place that detail how some of the simplest, poorest people in the world are the happiest. That’s why “first world problems” has become such a meme on the internet and in life. Because most of us HAVE known what it’s like to have it good, to experience total comfort in pretty much ever aspect of our lives, that now having a bad day or getting dumped or having an argument can lead to feeling so utterly depressed. We have nothing more important to worry about. A wild animal isn’t going to kill us. We aren’t going to die in our sleep from some disease of malnutrition. So if anyone deserves total and utter depression, it is people in parts of the world like that. Not must of us sitting here with internet access, refusing to accept that maybe we could just be happy if we tried harder.

I can’t remember exactly what the image said, but it stuck with me, something I saw online that said if you have a roof over your head and had something to eat today etc you’re richer than 75% of the world. I try to remind myself of that when I’m having a bad day. I could be having the bad day I’m having plus be sitting outside under a bridge somewhere and not knowing that I’m going to eat dinner tonight. Yeah it sucks when the only way to cheer yourself up is to constantly have to think of all the ways that it could get worse, but sometimes it’s a cheap tactic that works. I feel like shit right now but I’ll gladly feel this way for the rest of the day if it means I don’t get a phone call that someone in my family died in a car accident.

Frankly the human mind is a whiny *****. It is too forgetful. We too quickly forget how bad things can be, and become bored and unhappy with the level we are at. That’s why human nature seems so plagued by this “don’t know what you got, til it’s gone” concept. How many stories and songs have been written about that throughout history. Think you’re having a bad day? How about finding out someone in your family dies? How about getting in a car accident on your way home tonight? How about getting some horrible medical diagnosis? Have something like that happen and you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll change your mind to “I’d do anything to go back to that crappy day I thought I was having in the first place”. It’s sad that the spoiled human mind needs to constantly be reminded how bad things can get before we can learn to appreciate that maybe a regular day with nothing too exciting happening is still pretty decent.

I don’t mean to lecture but to speak from experience. I’m still learning too. Still far from learning to control my mind and conquer depression. I sit around and feel miserable for the majority of each and every day. I sit here and waste time thinking about the people who have rejected me and left me behind, the friends I wish still talked to me, the girlfriends I miss, the jobs I shouldn’t have quit. I haven’t had a friend in a couple of years now and I pretty much want to die the moment my eyes open in the morning. I’m so lonely and most days I feel like it is killing me. But I keep trying to discipline my mind to stop being so whiny. I try to find something to do online or read a book and just try to tell my mind to shut up, there are much worse things in the world than what I think my problems are. It’s 5 degrees outside, I’m sitting indoors, warm, wasting time on the internet. I’ll survive another day I guess.

Clinical depression is one thing. If you believe that sort of thing exists in the first place, that’s a depression that you may not be able to control. I would guess less than 10% of people who end up at a website like this really have clinical depression. For most it’s situational depression, upset about the way life is going, not a mental disease.

For the most part, there is a sick enjoyment in feeling like crap. If you’ve never asked yourself if maybe you actually get some sort of benefit out of your suffering, you might not have ever spent enough time sitting quietly and being introspective and asking yourself what’s really going on. There *is* self pity and attention seeking in depression no matter how much people would like to deny it.

Thoughts cause suffering. A pretty basic idea that things like Buddhism are based on. If you wake up in the morning, and you’re not literally feeling any physical pain, and you’re not worried about where to get food for another day or how you’re gonna survive, the only thing that can really make you suffer is your own mind. The people from your past aren’t actually in the room taunting you. It’s you choosing to sit there and think about it.

Another cheap saying that is true even if you don’t like it. Living in the past is depression, living in the future is anxiety. Human beings can’t time travel, our entire life we are only ever experiencing right now. We have the intelligence to understand that we exist for a certain number of years, but the only thing you are ever truly experiencing is a succession of “nows”. And you can be okay for just right now if you really try.

Oh well, done ranting. Don’t get me wrong I understand why people think a lot of stuff is BS. I feel that way sometimes too. Pain is pain and the suffering is real and no amount of self-help BS is going to change that. Other times I’m able to see the uncomfortable truth that maybe it really is about learning to be happy now. That’s the only thing you can choose to change.