I Am A Slav

This post is about joy. However, at the risk of sounding like a Bergman film, I will put out that I miss feeling joy and today I cannot remember the last time that I experienced unadulterated joy. This makes me sound like a depressed person in seek of a medication boost. We are, as a culture, getting to be far too dependent on happy pills. Further, there is a significant difference between joyful and happy.

In any case, I come from Slavs. I have that Eastern European blood (possibly spiced with Mongolian genes courtesy of the descendants of Genghis Khan) roaring through my body. My genetic soul traces itself back to a land of long cold winters. I am already having mixed emotions over the longer days as we pass midwinter. I crave the cold, dark nights and will no doubt mourn their passing, even as I delight in the coming Spring.

All of this is to try and cut off now the tsk tsk tongue clicking that will only read this post as more depressive moaning. In my work, as a nurse, I read many many History & Physicals. This is a dictated document by physicians so that there is a summary in a patient's chart for all who are providing care. Essential to a complete H&P is a list of current diagnoses. The percentage of these which list the diagnosis "depression" is astounding.

Why do you suppose there is so much depression all around us? I bristle when I read articles that suggest we are over prescribing medication, no doubt because in my case I feel the medication truly works and keeps my "depression" at bay. For me, however, that does not mean that the pills make me happy. Without my medication, my life would deteriorate into a frayed ball of jangled nerves and out of control anxiety. This would also lead to the profound sadness that is most often associated with depression. However, it is not about eliminating sadness.

I would suggest that sadness is the flip side of joy. Well, perhaps "flip side" is not the right image, suggesting the presence of one or the other emotion. Better to think of the too as a continuum with emotional dysfunction at the far extremes of either end - out of control joy becoming mania, for example.

A healthy life swings back and forth over this continuum. Perhaps it is natural even this time of year to hover more towards the sadness end of the spectrum. This should not be classified as depression.

It seems to me that so many of us desire a constant fix of whatever we are lacking. Let's start with climate, for example. Why do so many of us desire to live in a non-stop warm climate - perfect 80 degree weather, day in and day out? Think about that. What so many of us is wishing for is a kind of stasis. This has lead to massive shifts in the population to places that do not have the water resources to support that population.

Appetite is another area where we have trouble. We have a constant desire to be satiated. We want that piece of pie and we want it now. However, halfway through the pie we are wanting something else. We have learned to hate feeling hungry. We reject the sensation and reach for whatever we can put into our mouths. Our waistlines are testament to this one.

I could think of other examples to what I am trying to say, but the key one concerns sadness and joy. In our craving for a non-stop feeling of joy, first off we confuse happy with joyful, and then we completely reject anything remotely resembling sadness. When we see it in others, we immediately label it depression.

Sadness is such a key emotion to our humanity. Just as our conscious mind is dependent on dream sleep to remain functional, our emotional mind, I believe, is dependent on a varied palette of emotions. It is unhealthy to bury sadness.

I'll leave you with a musical clip.

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