For a depressed person, there’s something reorienting about a crisis. It reminds you there’s a world outside your head. Instead of fretting over the future or stewing over the past, you have something new to put in the brain. When it’s something terrible or sad and you are still somehow persevering—waking up, making coffee, eating, going to work—it’s a sign that, corny as this may sound, life goes on. For a depressed person, the notion that life will go on is always up for debate, so when it does go on, even in the face of tragedy, it feels reassuring.
