Depression can be of many types and many causes. Losing a person very close to us, a painful break up, getting fired from your job or a mess in your personal life, are things which hit us very badly. And we may take some time to come out of the trauma. On the other hand a bad feedback from your boss, or nasty comments by people close to you, or losing some important item, or a failure to get the job you want, could hurt you in a way. But this sort of depression does not stay too long. Yes there is also one kind of depression you get after watching a Karan Johar- Shahrukh Khan masterpiece, but that’s a different topic altogether. Again different people respond in different ways, so there is no sure fire cure for depression. At best we can only cope with it. Even then the onus lies on you, some one can only offer advice, its up to you, how to take it.
Now what I am sharing with you out here, is not something I got from books or some pop psychologists, offering a quick fix solution for everything. These are something shared from my own experiences and my own life. Now I don’t want to bore you with the narration of my life story. But for me I always had to struggle to prove myself, at all levels career, education and even personal. My career was something which I had to start from Ground Up, yes, typically from smaller companies with low salaries to a stage where I can negotiate with larger companies for better salaries. My educational life was pretty erratic too, and on the personal front I had to face some real painful times. So depression is something which has been quite a close companion to me and I just want to share my views with you.
Too often we get depressed, because things don’t go according to our expectations. We often feel jealous of the guy who has the great job, the best looking female, great looks and richer than us. And that really drives us into depression at times. Now this is where I feel we need to set our expectations realistically. I don’t mean we should aim low, but we should be pretty realistic about what we want. We want a perfect job with a perfect boss, we want a perfect family with a partner who looks like Aishwarya Rai or Abhishek Bachan, we want to have a perfect place to live, we want everything to go as we planned. Doesn’t work in real life. We have to understand that everything we have is not perfect. And we have to live with those imperfections. The guy whom you feel jealous of for having a salary higher than yours, and a wife straight out of a fashion magazine, could for all purposes be having a totally messed up personal life. I am not suggesting that you should give up everything and live in a shack, but not having the latest gadget in the market or not driving the latest bike does not in any way, make you a lesser human being. Ask yourself a simple question, Do I really need it or Do I want it because every one is having it? If the answer is the former, go ahead and try to get it, but if it is the former, does not make any sense losing your sleep over it.
Sometimes we plan for that moment, our own home, that business trip abroad, the engagement with the special person in your life or even that movie you have been dying to see from long. And then suddenly something out of the blue, hits you, something over which you have no control. It happened to me, my H1 was stamped, I was all set to go, and just when I was about to leave, the project got cancelled. It took some time for me to come out of it. And somehow I felt that I was always at the rough end. And it was then I slowly realized, that you need to take life as it comes. We often plan hoping everything goes accordingly, but quite often it does not, throwing us into depression. But its there we have to gather ourselves. We need to understand that at times things don’t go as we wish. Many often mock at the Indian tendency to leave everything to fate, but in a way that’s the best thing to do. It helps us to cope with our depression better, by understanding, that not everything goes to a plan. So does it mean, that we should not do anything and leave everything to fate? No, not even for a moment, do I advocate such an approach, but brooding over a failure, is not going to help things. We need to understand that life has to go on and get on with what we have rather than worrying about what we do not have.
There is this interesting story about Swami Vivekananda. When he was in Varanasi, he was being chased by a band of monkeys, a sadhu, who was looking told him “Why are you running? Face the brutes”. He did so and the monkeys immediately retreated. The problems and failures we face in our life, are like those brute monkeys. They keep coming at us. And we run away from them, unable to face them. Very often, when hit by a problem or failure, our first reaction is “Why does this always happen to me?”. It does not happen only to you, it happens to many people around the world too, and maybe even worse. Every one faces problems and failure, some stage or other, in their life. They just cannot be wished away with a magic wand. Going into a shell, trying to escape reality, does not in any way lessen your grief. It makes it worse. You have every right to aim for the sky, but you need to understand, that you will stumble many a time on the road there. To succeed, you need to learn to handle failure. That is the only way you can respect the value of success.
Did you commit a goof up at your work place and had to receive a bad tongue lashing from your boss? Is your boss the devil incarnate who keeps harassing you and takes all the credit for it? Is your partner upset with you, because you said something silly? Do you face those days, when nothing seems to go right for you? I am sure most of us have been through this stuff again. In such cases, you are bound to be depressed. And that’s when you need to just let yourself go. Take a walk, smell the flowers, and divert your mind. Play with your kids, or just watch a comedy. Do something, but make sure you just divert your mind from it. The more you keep brooding over it, the more depressed you are liable to be. Share your feelings with your close friends. And yes if you feel then tears coming, don’t hold them back. Crying your heart out, is a sure way of getting the load of your chest. Makes you feel more relieved. Don’t bottle up your feelings all inside yourself. Let them out one way or another.