Language

Maybe we human-folk were better off before language which seems to act as a barrier to communication .... The Last Quarter generation not infrequently is heard moaning about texting and the thin-on-feeling email World. I guess, for me, language, in general, is often a way of pulling away. Sitting with someone in silence? Holding their hand with but few words? are powerful experiences.

In any case, about a dozen readers to these postings imagine that when I speak of my sadness, I'm in need of some pills or some psychoanalysis.

Zo, as to rumors of my depression? What did Samuel Clemens say of the rumors of his death being greatly exaggerated?

Television commercials and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the psychiatrists in the New World believe that Sadness and Depression "go together like a horse and carriage.".

For me, though (it bears repeating, as dozens of notes have come in about this) Depression is a protective cover against some form of vulnerability -- often, sadness. Instead of feeling "like a Motherless child" or "a lost Soul in need of a hand to hold, a partner to walk with," the Depressed choose to withdraw from others or push others away often using sadness as an excuse. The Depressed pulls away, shuts themselves off like the Dead. Undefended sadness, on the other hand and in my way of thinking about it, is akin to the cry of the baby in the middle of the night ... "Come close, I'm alone or seeing something troubling or experiencing losses of parts of function, self or of my beloved who is no more."

The Drug companies would have us believe that sadness is pathological. Some presuicidal adolescents party hearty before jumping off the bridge or driving into an embankment. It was a truism in the treatment of Depression that when people came out of their Depression they were in the most danger. For me, when we deny the Sadness that is the natural precipitate of many of the life-cycle events, we deny ourselves ... we deny life and we ARE, then, in danger.

Watching children become autonomous ... losing the beneficent protection of parents and others as we grow ... losing the beneficent protectors, themselves .... watching skin lose its elasticity ... losing youthful vigor ... kids moving away, .... for me? not being able to run 5 miles each day .... knowing that a lot of the movie is complete ... all these can bring sad affect But push me away from others? Hardly. It brings me closer to these others who have or will experience similar feelings.

Sadness is very comfortable for me. I share IT publicly.

Freud, as some may know, suggested that Love and Hate weren't opposites ... It was apathy that stood in opposition to those two invigorating human emotions. I suggest that Sadness and Glee are, also, not opposites. I welcome the feelings surrounding goodbye's just as I welcome those around hello's .... the beginning, middle and end of the movie are all powerful in their own ways if they don't need to be HIDDEN.

In my language .... Depression, Anger and Mania are defenses against the rich textured expressions of merry play and wistfulness.

Ah, but that's my language and, for those for whom it enrichens their experience of sadness that draws them to share with others to share in this way, I say, READ ON!