Blessed with Misfortunes
Recently, I confessed to a pen pal that I had been struggling with a little depression a few letters back. I described to her the steps I had taken to shake it off and apologized if my mood had filtered into the letter. We correspond through audiotape, so I was particularly concerned about the infectious nature of vocal tone, and I also didn't want her worrying about me. The recording is just a point in time and not representative of the whole roundness of things as I've described in earlier posts. My friend responded with astonishment. "Your voice is always so cheerful and positive," she explained, "I didn't think you got depressed about many things." The truth is, everyone gets depressed. There is some comfort in that. We are all united in the experience. We can let go of any self-defeating feelings of inadequacy at our lack of perfect happiness because they're all based on illusion. Everyone feels sad or lonely or small. Everyone gets frustrated a...