As I suspect I'll be talking to myself and to whomever listens about sadness ... I think I'll take a couple of Kvetches to explain what I mean .... and how Sadness is different than Depression ... the world (including professionals) often confuses them ....
Sadness I
Depression is not a disease that afflicts the one without the other.
The one is ill and the other must mourn the loss of love. The one
cannot move and the other fears taking a singular step that might bring
more pain to the one who was once the source of so much that was good.
One lies in bed upstairs looking into the emptiness and the other
wanders downstairs or searches the streets for answers to questions
unknown. Depression is a disease that infects a couple and most often a
family.
Depression is a disease that infects a family. The suckling at the
depressed mother’s breast who can find no welcoming gaze can find no
succor, no emotional sustenance. The youngster watching his father lost
in the morning hours amidst clouds of smoke and pots of coffee knows
and sometimes adopts the trappings of depression. The young woman
watching her mother night after night lying lifeless in disarrayed
blankets and threadbare afghans knows all too well the hopelessness of
attempts to redeem this mother who bore her. The lover seeking out a
soul mate feels the tensed musculature, witnesses the hand-wringing,
and viscerally knows the meaning of absence. Depression is not a
disease that afflicts the one without the other.
Depression and sadness are not the same.
Depression is not sadness gone amok.
Sadness can intertwine with joy; depression cannot. Sadness bears
witness to the loss of a gift that once was, while depression allows no
memory of joy and, most often, disallows sorrow. Sadness affirms the
possibility of future celebrations that may take seed on the grave of
what cannot any longer be; depression attests to the inevitability of
loss that will follow on any connection. Sadness seeks comfort and a
comforter; depression seeks nothing for only numb nothingness fills the
depressed.
There is no one in the land who has breathed and who has not
breathed-in depression. If we add to the ranks of those who suffer
depression, those others who have shared space with them for days or
weeks or years ... we shall have accounted for most — if not all — of
humanity.
There is no one in the land who has taken a breath and who has not
breathed-in sadness, though there are many who cannot, thereafter, hold
their breath and savor this feeling and allow it its natural course.
Many are those who develop an allergy to sadness and cover their
feeling with anger, unjustified optimism, haughtiness, or the numbness
of depression.
Our culture and our language value the hiding of sadness more than they
do its experience. The culture mirrors our fear of the vulnerabilities
that are part and parcel of sadness. It has become more acceptable to
rage in daily interchanges than to cry. It is common for us to greet
the mourner with silliness, such as: at least he didn’t suffer ... or
if the departed lingered, then: it was a blessing that you had time to
say good-bye. It is an everyday occurrence for those who suffer
debilitating or life-threatening illness to hear near and dear commend
the use of positive thinking. And parents throughout the realm may be
heard chiding their children about their unhappiness: stop that crying
or I’ll give you something to cry about. The equation of misery with
sadness is, itself, a communication that depreciates sadness by
limiting it to the privileging of the absence of glee and pleasure.
The capacity for Sadness is a central component of Playing WELL
in the Last Quarter.
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