As a 25-year-old man, I know that the knowledge I possess of myself and the world I live in is at times limited, sometimes very limited. But I do know that I can learn from any situation no matter how earth-shattering or negative it may seem. I gained this knowledge by going through various degrees of suffering, this suffering contained suicide attempts, panic attacks, a family break-up, alcohol dependency, bullying and a partridge in a pear-tree. It was these years of suffering and hardship that I grew the most as a person, learning some of the most valuable lessons that life had to offer.
One of these lessons took the shape of a suicide attempt. On the way to the hospital my father kept repeating “This is the first day of the rest of your live”. Two thoughts entered my head that day, firstly, “I think it’s this guy that should be seeing a psychiatrist, not me”, and the second thought only made sense months after. It was a thought of total awareness, either I could let this suffering destroy me or I could use it to propel me to be someone beyond my current self. It also thought me that everything has a meaning behind it, no matter how hopeless the situation may seem. But it is up to ourselves to apply meaning to our suffering in order to overcome it, as Viktor E. Frankl has said “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’”. So the ‘why’ that I applied to all my suffering is that I will be greater for it and it is here to teach me or offer me something that I cannot offer myself.
Although my depression has thought me more than just a few lessons; one of them is that life can end instantly and needlessly. So I try grasping every moment and try to experience each passing minute without judging it, without looking externally for happiness, living every day for the betterment and growth of myself. At the same time I know I have the potential to not fulfil my own expectations of this. There are days that life will be beating me on the ground with a hurley. But this is the guideline of life that I have for myself in order to limit anymore suffering. I think it is important to instil meaning and enthusiasm into the everyday duties and things, like smiling as I clean the toilet or being aware of my breath as I do the washing. It was said by a great inspiration of mine, Henry David Thoreau “Find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” So I try to embrace, accept and be aware of the madness, and there is plenty of it.
My suffering has also thought me that my own self-worth cannot be achieved externally by peoples opinion (either positive or negative opinion). It comes from within, self-knowledge and self-love equals self-worth. Other peoples opinion of me, are only construed images of me, going through their own belief system, therefore if they think hateful things of me, they may think the same of themselves. I could say that I am above caring about what other people think about me, or that it doesn’t bother me. But I think it is in our D.N.A to be curious about what people are thinking. That is why we examine a minuscule sly remark like we are the next Sherlock Holmes or we ponder about a compliment we received last week. We may always want to know what is in the heads of other people but it is up to ourselves if we waste time and energy thinking of it. Instead of concentrating on what we can’t change, we should concentrate on being ok with our own downfalls, this is self-acceptance and self-love. I know that there will be times where I forget to do important things like taking Granny to a significant hospital appointment or forgetting to show up for work. I know that in these moments, I have to trade worrying or self-berating for practical thinking like actually calling someone to try appeasing the situation. So I can be comfortable with my own mistakes and flaws. More often than not, we know we have majorly messed up, so no matter how hard we and other people are on ourselves, it will not change it. It is imperative for my own mental health that I am different and that I am plugging in to my own creativity, so I cannot let peoples judgement stop me from this.
It was my depression which thought me to be different, to be creative as an expression of my own vulnerabilities and experiences. Instead of being ashamed and letting them rule my existence. I have a choice to transform these experiences through creativity into something completely new and uplifting. Just like seeing my experiences in a new light, I choose to see my depression in such a way too. So instead of a ‘breakdown’, it was a ‘breakthrough’; it was a ‘meltdown’, but to form into something new, like a metal reaching its hottest temperature to form something more malleable and more adaptable to the world around it. This was my inner self attempting to tell me that I was living wrong or dealing with circumstances in a non-self-sustaining way. It showed me that this crisis is evidence of an appetite for growth that hasn’t found another way of expressing itself. It is through acceptance that we can learn from these negative moments and see we are the better for it. As Albert Camus has said “Man (human) is the only creature who refuses to be what he is”; so if we accept our flaws and negative moments, we can learn and grow to become our true selves.
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