life has a way of testing our convictions and it’s been toying with me quite a bit lately. this is the first time in a long time that i can recall fighting with depression in the spring & summer. usually it just hits me in the fall & winter and it hasn’t been that bad the last few years even in those seasons. i’ve used a light box nearly every morning for thirty minutes for the past six or seven years. that got me off all the depression meds and helped me to feel pretty energetic.

but this is different. it doesn’t have anything to do with chemical imbalance or circadian rhythms. it doesn’t have anything to do with the weather or the sunshine. this depression is striking me from somewhere deep & frightening.
–

when you look at everything we face on a daily basis it’s no surprise that we live in a world that runs on fear & gasoline. (i used to think it was sex & gasoline, but that was a different post altogether, from a different perspective.)

every institution from politics to entertainment to religion & the markets is laced with fear. and it reeks from the pores of those who subscribe & rely so heavily on such things.

i’ve tried to run away from that black hole and stay focused on love, enlightenment and truth. and yet we all must exist in this world. sure, i could abandon everything & everyone, flee to the rainforest and live with the “tree people.” but i’ve decided that would be selfish and only a temporary fix. so i’m going to stay right here and fight. i’ll fight this fear, this economy, all of it. with everything i write and everything i do. it might not be the way you’d do it, but it’s what i have. if you use what you’ve got, just maybe we’ll have a fighting chance.
–

depression is the devil. it’s debilitating and not only does it hurt us, it causes us to lash out and hurt people we love. each of us individually – there are so many of us – has to find a way to conquer it the best we can.

i’m still discovering how to fight this new depression i’m facing. i know a lot of it has to do with holding back self-expression and seeing myself in a very scary place financially that i had never faced before. but i’ve also seen glimpses of the bigger picture. and i have hope, faith & love – gobs of those – which are the truest antidote for depression. so even though it’s a struggle, i claw my way out from under the sheets every day and try to change just one thing that’s wrong with my immediate situation. (today it was trying to get a glitch at the bank cleared up. there was tons of red tape, but i succeeded. tomorrow it will be something else, “sales report hell” most likely.)

i know we can’t change people. truly, we can’t even know anyone outside of our own perspective, so how could we change them. but i will try to stay awake and not give up. and if others do the same then maybe slowly, maybe with loud enough voices, we’ll change the world, one awake person at a time.
—

“i know my call despite my faults…”

by JTW
©2011 JTW “jtwhitaker.com” All rights reserved.