Last year, one of my colleagues and I decided we needed to lose some serious poundage off our stomachs and backsides. We decided to have a competition and have our staff members at work donate money per kilogram lost to the Beyond Blue foundation which helps people with depression.
In the end we must have raised nearly $1000 for Beyond Blue and we lost a combined weight of nearly 30kgs in 3 months. It was a great 3 months and the support of everyone was fantastic.
Out of all of the charities we chose, we went for one that helps depression as it is becoming the plague of the western world. Both of us have family members and friends who have suffered and still suffer from this horrible ailment.
What causes depression, well some experts will go into biochemical imbalances in the brain which lead to negative and depressive thoughts. Others will say it is a learned way of thinking based on reality maps created growing up, or even dietary.
I don't have an answer other then I have met people who meet at least one of the reasons above and many who have all of them. Which one is the Chicken and which one is the egg?
I do want to talk about one of them though and that is the learned view of what life should be and what it actually is. I have travelled to many countries that have large populations of poor and poverty stricken people. How many of these have depression? That would be an interesting study but going by what I have seen, many of these people are actually happy as they have lower expectations of what daily life is.
In the western world, I believe we are our own worst enemies. We set up an ideal of what the perfect life should be, and we then chase it, even if we don't need it. We then compare ourselves against it and come up short everytime. The danger then comes if we grow up with a mindset that we have to be perfect. If we come from homes or groups of people who gain self worth from achievement we then set ourselves up for disappointment.
People then start to compare their worst traits with other people's best and bit by bit, they start to erode their esteem and self worth.
I come from a very idealistic religion which tells you from a young age how you must be a worthy young man or young woman and we spend so much time on the rules or guidelines amongst ourselves that we forget the whole foundation of the religion is charity and humility. The rules and guidelines are there to keep us safe and help us but without charity, we have nothing. The women in our religion are the real gems and they culturally are the ones that keep it vibrant yet they are also the ones who suffer more from depression then the men.
Why is that?
My experience is that women tend to blame themselves more then men, where as men are happy to blame everything else but themselves. So when a family is not perfect or a member of the family struggles, it is usually the Mum or wife who takes the burden on themselves and they will compare themselves with other women who seem to have it all under control and judge themselves harshly.
That brings me to my next point, society today must be a very difficuly place for women. On one hand they are told to go out and become career driven women who can do everything and on the other, when they get married and have children and feel like they need to be with their children, they are looked down upon. The images in the media of the new age woman shows a super model having a baby and coming back looking like a super model again. The average woman while juggling nappies, cooking, cleaning and inconsiderate husbands must feel like a failure compared to their "social" role models. Then there are the ones without partners who are supposed to be happy in their independence yet aren't.
What about men? Well, today's society is all about being strong and athletic and successful in the work place. Work places are becoming more and more outcome driven to get what you deserve. All recipes for failure as not every one can win. Even they way we reward people in the corporate world leads to this. We rank people and even if you have done a great job, if you aren't in a certain percentile when compared against your peers, then you don't get rewarded.
Life is often about expectation. The older I get, the more I see Charity and Humilty as keys to happiness, but they start with yourself. When we compare ourselves to others or to what we "should" have or be in life, it can only end in sadness if we don't have a healthy sense of self worth.
I guess when Moses came off the mount the 2nd time with the tablets and one of them said thou shalt not covet, I wonder if that was meant for our time and our generation.
Don't covet what you don't have, work for that which will help you love who you are and what you can become.
Set an expectation that allows you to grow reasonably and remember, other people show their veneer.
This is by no means the answer to depression, there are a multitude of reasons why people get depressed and then depression. But perhaps if we started to be kinder to ourselves it might help a little.
