Wanting My Way Out of Depression

I experienced some depression this morning, which seemed odd given my rather delightful circumstances. After sitting in a debilitating fog for some hours I suddenly saw how to engage with it. I brought more and more awareness to the amorphous emotional vapor until I could sense its shape and form. Once I had a real ‘lock’ on it, I spoke with it.

Photo: shot from a train in Norway by Josh Whiton

“Why are you here? What is your function?”, I asked.

“To keep you from wanting,” it replied.

Immediately I understood it as a very old defense strategy to keep me from being disappointed. If I never let myself want anything, then I’ll never feel the pain of not getting it. Something like that.

So I decided to do the opposite — I let myself want.

I let myself want all sorts of things, without limits, without filters or self-censoring. I felt my desires fully and watched them morph as I did. And within minutes the depression lifted.

I know it’s been said that desire causes suffering. And I have on many occasions existed in planes ‘beyond’ wanting. But I think for most it’s useless advice, a misleading concept, giving us an elevated sounding excuse to keep aspects of our experience unacknowledged, unfelt, and disowned.

… which I am finding to be the greater cause of suffering.