Finding Your Place in This World
Millions upon millions of people suffer from depression and many do need clinical help. Yet I can’t help but wonder: What is causing all this depression?
If drug use is any indication, depression is rising at an alarming pace. Drugs can be effective at treating symptoms—and in many cases are necessary to do so—but what about the cause?
Those who struggle with depression, and I count myself as one of them, often use similar words to describe how they feel.
Hopeless.
Futureless.
Uninspired by the life in which they have landed.
Like there is no place for them in this world.
Could it be that some, not all, but some people are fighting with depression because they’ve gone too far, for too long, down a path they weren’t built for? They settled. They made mistakes. They experienced setbacks.
I can say with certainty that the answer to this question is yes. Because that is my story.
We were told to act a certain way. We tried for a while, but it never felt right. So we learned to believe something was wrong with us.
We tried to do something, many things, and failed. We internalized failure. Made failure our identity. We owned failure, like a cold cup of day old coffee.
What if we change our mindset?Instead of acting the way other people say we should, we begin to act the way we were made.
Instead of settling for the cards we’ve been dealt, we build something new, something that fits our uniqueness.
Instead of internalizing failure and accepting it as our identity, we look at failure as pruning. Where our life, the life we were made for, takes shape before our eyes during many trips around the sun;
Where some things we failed at weren’t meant for us, and other failures were opportunities to try again, only smarter this time.
I’m so thankful for the technology we possess today, where we can understand the way the human body works to the degree that we can create compounds that help us diminish painful, sometimes dangerous symptoms. But if we’re only treating the symptoms, we’re missing an opportunity to cure the root.
Trying to be someone we are not is mentally sapping.
It’s horrible to wake up Monday morning and drive in to a job that isn’t meant for you.*
For over a decade, I moved from thing to thing, entrepreneurial job to corporate job, artistic career to technical career like I was sampling plastic plattered hors d'oeuvres at a party I wasn’t invited to. I sometimes experienced success for a while, sometimes experienced complete failure from the start. After more than a decade, and experiencing my biggest failure of all, I applied for 2000 jobs, trying to reboot my life. I had no idea who I was. I didn’t have a clue as to what I was made for. I was ashamed of hoping from one interest to the next. I wrote a resume that hid who I was. I never told anyone all the things I’d done.
I was trying to hide because I’d been taught, and I’d taught myself to believe, that the kind of life I’d been living was the path toward eternal frustration and lack of accomplishment. That hoping around was for losers.
It’s so cheesy, almost too cheesy to admit, but since you and I are such close friends, or at least I think we could be if we spent some time together, I’ll tell you something embarrassing about me. I remember thinking one night about the words to a song by Michael W. Smith.
“Roaming through the night to find my place in this world.”
For those of you who lived through the 90s and now have this stuck in your head, I’m deeply sorry. But despite the cheesiness of this song**, the lyrics of this one line at least said exactly what I was struggling so hard to do. Except I wasn’t roaming, at least not through the night.
I think a lot of people are trying to find their place in this world. Heck, Taylor Swift wrote a song about the same thing 20 years after my man MWS! I think a lot of people haven’t found their place yet.
I think that’s why a lot of people hate going to work on Mondays. And why a lot of people drink so much. And why a lot of people are so angry***. And why a lot of people struggle with depression.
What if we could find our place?
What if we were excited to get up on Mondays? What if we weren’t angry all the time anymore? Why if we could cure our depression by healing the root instead of only treating the symptoms?
I believe we can. I believe you can. You do it by being yourself. Not the self other people want you to be. Not the idealized, fake self you sometimes try to become because of culture and Hollywood and advertising. Not the Xeroxed self that is just a butt-copy of that person you look up to so much (or are jealous of).
The real you.
* Let’s face it, some jobs aren’t made for anyone, but we’ll have to save that subject for another time.
** Here is the actual first verse, which I had to look up, I promise.
The wind is moving
But I am standing still
A life of pages
Waiting to be filled
A head that's full of dreams
But this becoming
Is harder than it seems
*** I was cut off by a guy the other day that I’m pretty sure has not yet found his place in this world.
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Photo by Richard John Pozon.
