This is one of those night I strated to think about future. What is ahead of me? I ended up thinkinging about hope. What is hope?
It means so many different things to so many people. For some people it’s about getting food to stay alive. For some people it’s about getting alive to a school or to a scrocery store. For some it means about getting through the everyday life, even you have everything you need. I’m one of the persons in the last group.
I have a family. Beatyfull and smart wife, two awesome boys. I love my family more than life itself. Â I have a good and stable job. I don’t drink or act “insane”. Everything is pretty much like you could wish for. But there is still the but…
I have been on meds for more than four years. I have been seening a shrink for a three years. Have I gained hope? Nope. I have became aware what hope is for me. Yes. It’s about future plans. It’s about dreams you would like to make  true. So what are my plans and dreams?
My plans is to raise my kids and help them to become “normal” adults. But after that? What are my dreams?
I’m tired of getting exited about the posibilities in life. Having a thousand ideas and solutions in my head and being able to realize only few of those. Seing people not to take advatage of the opportunities they have been offered to. Seing so many good and excellent things to go in vein. This is why I do eat my meds. Slow my down and help me not feel that I’m failing all the time.
I still feel too much, but not the right things. I would like to feel joy about the things I have. The smiles on my sons faces. The small things in life.
In real life it goes so that the more meds I eat the less I feel. The less I feel the more I miss in life. The more I miss in life the less I want to live. If I eat less meds the more I feel depressed. The more I feel depressed the less I want to live. In either case the end result is the same. After my boys are old enough, my dream is not to feel anything at all. About ten years and then I’m free to live my dream and feel nothing at all.
That is my dream and that is what hope means to me.
Br.
T
4 comments
You’ll have fulfilled your role as a good Dad but what about as a grandpa?
Reading this post made me ponder my own perspective, and so I had to ask myself “what does hope mean to me?” What I write is my opinion, and it reflects the truth which I have found and continue to find in life. That being said, your philosophy is as valid as mine on this matter, if not more so in that it is a product of your own conscience, and your own experience. As I write, I’ll incorporate and address some of the things which you wrote about in your post that I found particularly meaningful, and I hope that I can offer a bit of encouragement.
I understand exactly where you are coming from when you say that you are tired of getting excited about the possibilities in life. I can certainly relate to that sentiment. This pattern of “hope” and disappointment has had an impact on me, and I too struggle with depression. I have chosen not to use medications, as I have experienced the same blunted affect with or without pills. I choose now not to worry about feeling the “right” things, but to embrace what I do feel as a learning experience. My sister also struggles with depression, and has had more success with medication than I have. I do not advocate going off your medication as I did, since they may have more utility to you than they did to me, but I would recommend a few things which have been helping me–keeping a journal, and meditating.
I write as much as I can on my experiences when I feel up to it, and I write both of joy and sorrow. This habit helps me to keep the sorrowful things in perspective among the joy of the little things, whether or not I feel joyful when those events actually occur.
When I meditate, I try to clear my mind not only of thoughts, but of emotions. I let them float by, without latching onto them, just as water flows through a river without hindrance. When water meets an obstacle, it finds a way around it. So too do I, at least when I am able to maintain this perspective outside of meditation (which I will admit is not a majority of the time, but when I am able to, I find much more meaning in my successes, and I am not as compelled to dwell on my failures).
I’ll begin here with my theory: the idea of hope, to me, no longer entails making plans for and getting excited about the future. It is a quiet knowing, one which begins and ends in the here and now. It can change and evolve just as we can as people. It is a matter of embracing life for what it is, in light of the fact that life is a struggle–and we do not struggle in vain. Hope, to me, now represents the meaning which we find in life, and the application of that ever-changing meaning as time passes by.
You said that you have a thousand ideas, and that you can only realize a few of them. You are wiser than I to say such a thing. I spent years of my life in an identity crisis before I came to a similar conclusion.
I have been offered many tremendous opportunities only to turn them down, and I have had many great ideas which I have not acted upon, all for fear of failure. I thought that I was defined only by having all the answers, that if I cannot be successful (and effortlessly so) in the eyes of others then I can never be a success in my own eyes. I no longer carry such pretensions, as it was that fear, and not a lack of competence, that I know was holding me back from being successful in my own eyes. Even if you feel like a failure at times, as I have, this is not to be worried over or even to be strictly avoided. Our failures are opportunities in and of themselves–opportunities to learn. It is not about feeling the “right” thing, but rather it is about finding meaning in the lightness and darkness of what we do feel.
Wisdom, as I now know, is not a matter of having all the answers before life happens, but rather it is a matter of sharing your struggles and your insights with others as best as you know how to so that they can better equip themselves for the future.
One day, your sons may be fathers in their own right, and they will remember just how much there is to live for through hope. They will remember to get through life, even if it is a terrible struggle. Having struggled with depression, you stand in a unique position to offer them insight should they ever find themselves in the same situation. They will remember the perspective that you share with them.
“Not without hope we suffer, and we mourn.” -Walt Whitman
Courage, and peace be with you,
-Daniel
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Your words means a lot to me. This is a first time for a long time I have really managed to get my thoughts out of my head and share them with someone. So I keep opening up a bit more.
I’m not afraid of been wrong or failing in a project or something like that. Those kind of failures are just a points between start and the solution. Like you said, failures are opportunities to learn. I’m way too curious to find out why I was wrong or why I failed. I want to learn why that is why I have never been afraid of being wrong.
The reason why I get more depressed is that I have ideas and vision how much better things could be (work, home, hobbies, small things, big things). I’m pushing changes through all the time but things are not changing fast enough. People are resisting change even they know it’s a must. They are not willing to put in any effort. They are kind of comfortably numb.
I’m fighting on too many front lines. I’m not efficient enough and that is why there is too few hours in a day. I’m falling becaus I’m not accomplishing things fast enough. It’s just too much of every thing.
How you described meditation sound awesome. I will try meditate and empty my mind. I will let ideas, emotions and everything just flow by and feel nothing at all for a moment! Maybe I can live my dream and live. At least I have ten years to try…
Br. T
I don’t know what hope is, really. To me it’s always been a thing, an idea that flies away like a butterfly before I can ever grasp it. Eventually I learned to stop hoping, because like the proverbial carrot on a stick, it is always so tempting but just out of reach. I am completely disfigured. Inhuman looking. What is hope, for someone like me? There are dreams of being normal, dreams of some god magically curing me, dreams of enjoying simple things that other people take for granted like swimming pools, and mouths that can turn upwards to form a smile, bellies that don’t vomit out everything they eat, and “normal people” skin that doesn’t look like its been burnt. But we are not living in fairy land where dreams come true. Isn’t hope in futility worse than no hope at all? They say the higher we climb, the further we fall. If I live in despair, at least I don’t expect miracles that never arrive. So really hope depends on the circumstances. It’s nice to have hope for obtainable things that might possibly happen. It’s torture to have hope for the impossible.