It's not what you think.

What do you think depression is? Being blue? Feeling sad? Feeling down? Not wanting to get out of bed? All of these are part of it, but depression is so much more; or, really, less.

Imagine that you wake up one morning and you try to get up but nothing happens. You try harder and there's a twitch. You dedicate every ounce of will you have to the task and you sit up. Repeat the trying process with standing. Once standing you find that you aren't sure what to do next. And you find you don't care. But you realize what you're supposed to do, what you have to do, so you do it. As you're doing normal things like brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes and preparing your lunch, you find that things feel unfamiliar and you're doing them out of order, occasionally forgetting things and missing steps. Like putting on your shoes without your socks. Or pouring your coffee but forgetting to put it in your bag.

On the way to work, you hear a commercial about shaving gel or some TV show and you find you're crying for no apparent reason. You imagine this happening while you're at work, in a meeting or at lunch, and you don't really care. At your desk, you stare at all your projects and you don't know where to begin. So you start somewhere and find yourself flitting between projects, not really getting anything done. You realize you're making mistakes (when someone else points them out) even though you have given every ounce of your attention to every second of every task at hand, and checked and re-checked your work.

While you're working, everything distracts and annoys you. People typing. People talking. People chewing gum and walking, the light in the room. You have to re-type emails because you realize you're being testy and uncharitable. A feeling of wrongness and dread burbles and gurgles inside of you. It's always there. For no apparent reason, you feel like your co-workers are hiding things from you, trying to sabotage you. You can't make decisions. You can't think things through the way you are used to being able to. You can't be creative. You stumble unexpectedly in conversations. You can't think of normal, everyday words. You suddenly feel happy for no reason, and then vicious, and then nothing. You feel like everything needs to go away. Everything, including you.

When you get home at night, you feel like doing nothing. You sit in front of the TV because you can't really hold a conversation with the person you love. You think about things that you should be doing but you don't care. You don't feel hungry, but you eat. Eating feels good. It's the best feeling you've had all day. You feel like if you could just eat without stopping, you would be fine. You feel physically full, but you still want to eat. You realize this is ridiculous, but it's how you feel. You feel like going to bed every moment you are awake, but you don't want to go to bed because sleep will bring you closer to the following day.

You don't feel sad. You just feel less. It's like someone has accessed the fuse box of your brain and has started flipping switches at random. It is easier to feel sad than happy, and it's easier to feel any negative emotion than a positive one. But you don't know what's coming next. Yo udon't know how anything is going to make you feel. You feel like you can do anything. You feel like you are a failure. You feel nothing - an unaccustomed, screaming silence inside of you.

Go to bed, wake up and do it all again.

That begins to scratch the surface. But I believe that depression, like pregnancy or being quadriplegic, is something that must be experienced to be fully understood.

Tread Lightly

Last Thursday, as I approached a corner of the small cube farm I work within, I heard my boss ask, "My God, the floor is shaking — who is doing that?" I announced cheerfully that it was I. She tried to recover by saying that it must be just the way I walk. And it could be true, if I were a small person. My boss has been known shake the floor with her intense strides — she only weighs about 120 lbs. To reiterate this experience, on Saturday, my wife and I ran into our downstairs neighbor as we left for our tiny trip to the beach. He asked us if we could try to walk a bit lighter, and said that the pounding was driving him insane and keeping him from sleeping. Merry thought it could be the cat, who jumps around a lot, but our neighbor described it thus: "I hear you walking and it sounds like you're lifting the couch and dropping it repeatedly."

Honestly, I don't walk heavily for someone my size. But now I tiptoe around the apartment and take small, slow steps at the office. But I'm about as adept at treading lightly physically as I am figuratively.

Scuse me while I stomp off to bed.

All Summer in a Day

Rain - a two and a half hour drive to get to work. But thanks to the rain I finally found a short film that had been in the back of my head since I was single digits. Some blessed philanthropist had posted it on YouTube. I was going to watch it at work, but it was a bit long, so I sent myself a link to it. Google had taken it down when I got home. I was denied my chance at sunshine. I wonder if, when the owners of YouTube.com sold it to Google, they knew how much Google would ruin with its conscientiousness. I can't argue with Google - they're only doing the safe thing, the legal thing. But I've searched before. There is nowhere to get this film.

Ten years later

Last night I threw away most of my notebooks from college. I flipped through
a few of them. It was like paging through someone else's photo album and
realizing that I was the one who took all the photos. I could see my
handiwork and my passion for learning and knowledge. The things I could do
and the stuff that I knew are all history. I'm glad that I have that history,
but the notebooks are bland-faced keepsakes filled with unintelligible
markings, so they are better gone. It's best not to be reminded of what I've
forgotten. The memories that survive are all that is necessary.

Systematic Theology

Here's a new question: Why do things happen the way they do? Everybody wants to know how God works. Well, maybe not everybody. The atheists want to know how fate or the universe works. Whether it's God, the gods, nature, science, statistical probability, or some combination of these, everyone wants to find patterns and explanations. Yes, I've heard of existentialism. But let's not go there. I don't believe that anyone is truly an existentialist in the core of their being. Our brains are hardwired to find patterns, whether they're visual, auditory, or logical. So people look for patterns. We're logical. So what?

So this. I think that every aspect of human nature is flawed. Corrupt. There's bad code in our hardware, and it's pervasive. This means that we get sick, we get old, we die. Our desires and tendencies are broken - we want to do things that lead to bad consequences. Guess what else is flawed? Our reason and logic. People have made very logical decisions with horrible results. Genocide, for example, has been a logical decision to solve a problem by killing off a group of people who are, arguably, causing the problem. Genocide is a bad decision, however, ethically and practically. This serves only to illustrate that logic doesn't always lead to truth.

This is what I have so far: People want to know why things happen the way they happen, and logic is not infallible. So, logically, like everyone else, Christians should be careful when using logic. Yet Christian logicians abound. They're called theologians. What they practice is theology or systematic theology. They all use logic and reason, but they don't all come to the same conclusion. Forget what those conclusions are. The point is that they're different. Is this because some are more proficient at logic than others, or that some are smarter than others? It could be, but there are multiple practitioners of the divergent brands of theology, so I think that the playing field is fairly level.

Perhaps we need a big debate showdown to find the truth. Whoever is right will win the debate, right? I don't think so. Being better at logic, being a better public speaker, thinking more quickly on the feet, and knowing the Bible better in its original language do not guarantee getting closer to truth or to God. Even so, many Christians rely heavily on theology. Not only do Christians rely on theology, but I often sense pride in theology: a tendency to look down upon or immediately dismiss the ideas of Christians who have not studied systematic theology and don't know what terms like dispensationalism and hermeneutics mean.

Yes, I know that God gave us minds and we need to use them. I don't think that ignoring reason leads to wisdom and a closer relationship with God. I do think that intellect needs to be balanced by spirit and feeling, and all of these need to be led by scripture. I'm not good at this; I tend to fall out of balance all the time. I'm just so weary of Christians accusing other Christians of having a wrong understanding of God for esoteric theological reasons.

This isn’t the end of my train of thought on this issue, but I feel like I need to post this or it will never get posted. I’m starting a new job tomorrow, and I’m going to be continuing to do work for my business, so I’m going to be busy as hell for a while.

Talisker

1. I've added a new favorite to my ever-growing of favorite scotches. Talisker. It is the smoke that I love so much in Johnny Walker Black, Gold, and Blue. It's smoky, but not caustic. It's sweet, but not self-aggrandizingly sweet like Laphroaig Quarter Cask. I think this is why it's taken me three months to finish a 750 mL bottle of the Quarter Cask. It's bursting with flavor, but it's too sweet, overly youthful, fanatic in its smokiness. I drink one glass, about a shot's worth, and I think, that's interesting, but I get it, and I don't need any more. Talisker, however, I drink and say, I've almost got it. Tell me again. I think I'm getting it - just one more time. It's disappearing way to quickly from the bottle.
   
   
2. Don Peris's new album, Go When the Morning Shineth, is fantastic in the most subdued way. I listen to it again and again. It's mostly instrumental, so his voice does not characterize the album. His duet with his wife, Karen, is a great song, however, and my favorite vocally-accompanied song.
   
   
3. Today I failed to get a car loan from the credit union that financed my dearly departed Civic. I have appealed to the loan director for reconsideration. I know that God will get me a car sometime in the next 12 days because I need one.
   
   
4. This evening I went for a walk. It's amazing how purifying a walk can be if it is long enough, and if there is enough undeveloped space along the path. The mindless fervency of vegetation, the greediness of flying insects, small fields of tigerlillies, dirt and vegetation encroaching upon cement and asphalt, drooping rooves and rusting vehicles step after step give a sense of the permanence - the reliability - of change.
   
   And what better time for a walk than summer? When is the air closer? When are there more smells of living things? There's no other timefeeleel more a part of things, like I could plant myself and grow roots, like I could breathe out and out and become moist air. I left for my walk feeling defeated, afraid, ashamed, anxious, and worthless. I came back feeling hot and sweaty, slightly tired in my legs, unperturbed, and thoughtful. Almost peaceful. The other feelings were not gone, but they were made irrelevant, like a shin-high guardrail between me and a trail into the woods. Do I even think about stepping over it, or am I already beyond it before I've even lifted a foot?
   

now is slippery

I've been trying to find a construction of words that can capture and display now — what's going on, what's going to happen — but I can't. I don't really understand what's happening now. Trying to focus on it ends up with me in an anxious state of catatonia, staring here, staring there. It's living in that instant just after you wake up... that instant that seems to stretch out and separate from the previous instant, so that nothing has happened in that instant, but everything prior to that instant occurred a long time ago.

Then I fall back into doing — doing the things that must be done, and I know that the now is pushing me along. Like Peter on the waves, as long as I don't look to hard at things and try to figure out what's going on, I don't sink. There are constant things... my marriage, God. God doesn't change, but everything else changes so much that my perspective shifts and God often looks different at different times. And God has placed me where I am in every now, and it is good. God knows what I need, and he has given me the best for me.

I often wish that I could just break down and fall apart. Throw off responsibility. I want these things like a diabetic wants a Butterfinger, or an alcoholic wants a beer. It's the kind of want I'll be glad I never got.