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December 15, 2006
Hello everyone,
It has been said that men, unlike women, are notoriously out of touch with their emotions and the inner rhythms of their bodies. Likewise, there are two things I have tended to forget this past semester: just how busy I have been (as silly as it might sound) and just how fortunate I am and remain. This week has been finals week and there was no chance of my getting a newsletter dashed off before today (Friday). However, for whatever reason in my dreams last night, I dreamed I found myself in prison, not for any crime that I can remember; I do not honestly know how I ended up there nor do I remember feeling particularly unsettled about the fact, but that was where I happened to find myself nonetheless. Yet my life was not too far removed from my life now and I had an extraordinary amount of privileges afforded me. I was allowed to freely roam the facilities—not the most exciting thing, given the concrete walls and tile floors—but nevertheless a great level of freedom I more or less took for granted in my dream, not considering how few of my fellows were likewise afforded this luxury. Given that this prison had rather large wards instead of individual cells, and given that I could freely enter any ward I wished and even the offices of the staff members: well, my freedom was really quite remarkable.
I also would often bring things to my fellow prisoners, who in some instances suspiciously appeared to resemble my students. For example, with the help of a few others (who likewise looked suspiciously like some of my fellow GTAs who teach alongside me), I moved one young woman’s furnishings into her ward, which included a number of books and other amenities that would not typically be allowed in such a setting, or at least not in such large numbers to a single person. (I remember recognizing on some level that she was herself rather privileged.) I also owned a laptop and had full access to the Internet day and night (that probably would not usually happen in prison either, at least without some severe restrictions) and spent quite a bit of time writing, designing Websites, and doing a lot of the things I now do with my life. Further, I was able to teach my fellow prisoners writing skills, not something I spent a lot of time doing or thought much about, but thinking back on my dream, far more than I noticed: this person, or that person, or some other person was always asking questions about how best to word this or that sentence or soliciting my opinions and advice by requesting I read over something that he or she had written. It was not until I awoke, however, that I realized what all of this meant and how the current skill level that I take so for granted in my usual everyday affairs would in many contexts reveal just how extremely fortunate and blessed I really am. Dreams have an uncanny way of telling us the truth about ourselves at times.
Sometimes I do think my life a prison, yet how much freedom I have! And how much I undervalue the things that not only enable me this freedom, but allow me to empower others, like the “student” who was herself rather privileged compared to her fellow prisoners. I suspect we all fail to see the many ways our lives are blessed because there is usually some factor we feel is missing. That is to say, we often focus not on what we do have, but on what we do not, and on that scale, the deck is stacked before the game even begins: it is absolutely inevitable we are going to come up shorthanded.
In any case, I have not only been busier this semester than I ever have been, I have also been on a much wider emotional roller coaster as well. (Next semester I have cut my classes back to the bare minimum so as to avoid this kind of emotional overload.) I had actually started to write something for a newsletter last night, but found myself too exhausted. However, what little I managed to get typed will reveal a little more about a prison that is perhaps (or perhaps not, for that matter) one of my own making, though for me a very real one. I write:
Many who have been on this mailing list for some time have concluded two things about me: that I tend to struggle with depression intermittently and that around the end of the semester I am more likely to be affected. The maddening thing about depression is that it forms such an oppressive weight that seems like it will never lift. A friend recently sent an encouraging collection of quotations and excerpts dealing with dark emotions, and among those that best characterize that curious frame of mind known as depression is this observation from Andrew Solomon in The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression: “You can neither remember feeling better nor imagine that you will feel better. Being upset, even profoundly upset, is a temporal experience, whereas depression is atemporal” (55). That has certainly been my observation: depression is atemporal in the sense of seeming to be without beginning or end. Also very accurate are these words from University of Colombo (Sri Lanka) lecturer Granville Dharmawardena; he suggests that whereas with boredom: “[y]ou don’t want to be bored and you have the energy to do something about it [, . . .] when you are depressed you haven’t got the energy, you’ve lost hope” (Beyond Boredom and Depression). Both individuals have accurately assessed that peculiar frame of mind known as depression: it often appears to come from nowhere and once it settles it seems as if it has been there forever—how very, very true that “you can neither remember feeling better nor imagine that you will feel better”—and it feels heavy and oppressive like a terrible burden or cloud has descended upon your very center of consciousness; you feel drained of all energy, the spiritual and emotional languor at times absolutely overwhelming. Put another way, depression is often all-consuming and totally overwhelming, effectively immobilizing a person in its more acute stages.
Prayer, I suppose, is what has made the difference for me, but it seems as though this finals week my head has suddenly cleared, and I am as a man sitting in a cloud of dust, wondering what happened and how he got there. That is often how I feel when the heaviness of ongoing depression suddenly lifts, but I can assure you that it is a welcome release, and I shall savor it as long as it lasts. It really is strange to me how an emotional frame of mind can be so incredibly crippling on so many levels, interfering with one’s ability to think, concentrate, and even eat and sleep at times. And then, when it suddenly lifts, I wonder how I could have ever felt that way. It frankly baffles me, but I rejoice nonetheless that I am currently enjoying a reprieve from it all.
I suspect, if we were to tally the score, much of the depression I experience is a result of relatively high levels of stress (my own fault or otherwise) and probably a relatively low tolerance level. For that matter, I doubt it is any one thing but rather a very complicated mix of factors. Recently in Reader’s Digest there was an article entitled The Secret Men Won’t Admit: When he seems ticked off or withdrawn, it may not be what you think, and it noted there that depression, like alcoholism, tends to run in families (though it did not suggest whether it is a case of genetics, learned behavior, or a combination thereof), and some are more susceptible than others. In my own case, I have long seen my life as a two-edged sword, for on one level, I think that I have quite a high level of sensitivity to the things around me, including the feelings of others and the little undercurrents both good and bad that ripple beneath the surface in the room around me. Yet this very sensitivity also manifests as a sort of fragility as well, in much the same way that a precision wrist watch could not withstand the kind of conditions that beset a clock mounted outdoors atop a public building. For that reason, I think I am also more prone and susceptible to depression as well and need, at times, to consciously reduce my stress level as much as I am able.
For that matter, the university life is not particularly well suited for high stress levels either, at least without a strong outside support system. If one works in agriculture or industry, for example, one may work hard and come home exhausted, but there is something about physical exhaustion that can also be cleansing because it “burns off” the excessive adrenaline. By contrast, primarily intellectual work, whether in the school, church, clinic, or office, does not generally have this physical component unless it is intentionally introduced. The demands and the workload are often roughly the same between physical and sedentary work, but the physical labor has a built-in method for reducing adrenal levels that is not afforded intellectual work. In fact, my sometimes chiropractor, friend, and long-time subscriber Jeremy Thornton recommended an article from his site entitled Stress and Adrenal Function that was really quite insightful. Among the take-home points to my non-medical mind was the fact that stress is cumulative and our bodies blind; stress is stress is stress no matter its origins—“[e]motional, structural, and chemical stress all affect the body the same way”—and reducing the stress in one area of our lives gives us that much more reserve to effectively deal with the stress in the other parts of our lives. I am not sure I had ever consciously considered the fact that reducing a bit of stress here that I can control could in turn help me deal with other stresses there that I cannot, but it makes obvious sense.
Whatever the case, there is not much else I have to share with you today. My contributions as of late have been running rather short, but then again, I have been running a bit short myself lately, but am showing clear signs of improvement after a little over a month of down time. I do thank you all for your continued prayers and your patience: it tends to be just a little more visible when it is the author of a periodic mailing who is flagging, but as I have suggested, I am now off for break until the Spring and I have cut my courses back for this upcoming semester. For that matter, I should be better prepared all the way around. This past semester, between teaching and taking courses, I had more credit hours than I have ever run at a single time in my entire college career. When you add into that a few factors I have not mentioned here (related to my unspoken request a few weeks back), it made for one of the most stress-filled semesters I have experienced in a long time.
Again, thanks for hanging in there with me and if all goes well, we can expect a run of normal newsletters once more, hopefully beginning with the very next issue. :)
God bless,
Eric
P.S. For those interested in the topic, another great Website on depression that goes beyond the usual facts-and-figures approach can be found at Depression Information. I was initially somewhat skeptical when a friend sent it to me some time ago because of the apparent sales ploy, but soon realized the information itself was solidly on target in many ways (and, for that matter, the for-profit recovery program advertised might very well might be too, my own tendency toward cynicism notwithstanding). See you in two weeks. . . .
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