Depression in the 21st century: “the feeling of a man who wants to give up”
One of our weaknesses as humans is fear or uncertainty, motivation or self-confidence is not enough to suppress that constant nudge in our hearts of the fear of the unexpected. Part of the fragments of humanity is the struggle to be heard, acknowledged and loved, which explains why our daily quest has every iota of seeking approval from the society or the ones we love, consciously or not. So, not meeting up with expectations or achieving below expectation triggers the fear of not being acknowledged or loved as much as we desire which most times could be our mere imagination, better still viewing life from our lenses, not others.
A visceral description of depression is quoted by the UK campaign group Mind. “It starts as sadness, then I feel myself shutting down, becoming less capable of coping. Eventually, I just feel numb and empty”. An excerpt from an online publication https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/04/what-is-depression-and-why-is-it-rising
A basic description of depression would be giving up. Familiar scenarios would be rewriting an examination for years and not getting the required grade you seek while your mates aces this exam with ease. In this part of the world, we would readily attest it to ill-luck or spiritual manifestations. It takes enough encouragement from others not to give up, rarely self-conviction. This feeling is quite common in every sphere of life, in seeking love, career paths, family or even ourselves. We find ourselves giving it all up once in a while, but all this never happens all at once because it was a consistent build-up of failures and fears, the moment the zenith is reached we shut down just like that old phone or PC. After all, you reached your breaking point.
The 21st century has crowned itself with the great glory of technological innovation and advancement, I describe this century as the era of the moving train, with everyone on a constant chase to meet up. The media being one of the most viable tools for the transmission of information has also contributed adversely to the decline in mental health and stability of the society at large. It is like a two-edged sword because I could get motivated by an inspirational write up online on the next click, I am emotionally down because of the availability of diverse contradicting contents for our consumption. There is a daily struggle to catch up, which explains while one second you are tweeting and the next you are on the gram while taking a peep on WhatsApp. No one wants to be left behind, so everyone becomes self-consumed in the struggle of keeping up with trends and the thirst to be the trend, we forget that actual living is not about keeping up with trends but being the trend we seek. And yes the brethren who fall behind in the struggle to catch up is left with two options, keep up or give up. We know the easy option is what every human seeks, so he/she sticks with the latter.
The clause here is, not everyone in the race can keep up, some already gave up while on the race but will not stop for many reasons. We all wonder why the last person in a race never stops running even when we know the winners, well it is the same explanation for chasing this moving train with full the awareness of never catching up. So, many are just shattered on the inside and masking it with fake smiles, thank God for emojis and smileys, a thousand worries are well hidden.
Another struggle in this century would be that of perfection, a mirage we all chase unconsciously. Perfect body, spouse, family, job, grades and friends. This epidemic has come to stay for as long as we let it, we do not only have filters for our pictures but of our emotions. Everyone is busy living someone else life and living for their standards even when we know it is not who we are and what we want to be. Since it is the world perfect, we take it in hook, line and sinker and mask it all with a smile, like a well-programmed robot. As long as we look perfect, the world is ready to listen, that is the erroneous mantra.
We forget perfection itself is relative and subject to individual desires and wants. Why would your yardstick of life be that of someone else when you are not even living the same kind of life ?. Role models and mentors are cool, but what is uncool is trying to replicate their lives in yours to the latter. And we wonder why depression is on the rise, this can also be compared this to an average kid trying to achieve similar feats as that of Bill Gates when he knows the time, season, era and people in their circles are different. You can not live your life trying to infuse another lifestyle in yours, if you do, then you are at home with depression. They say the spice of life is diversity, then why do we then struggle to live a life of patterns?
Another perspective will be the wrong notion of believing depression is a weakness. People hide the fact that they are depressed because they feel it is a form of weakness and the fear of being stigmatized in society. It is a known fact that very few understand what depression is and how to help a depressed person. So, when an individual gets depressed there is hardly anyone to talk to, the best option is locking it all up and sulk in the shadows. As everyone locks up, we automatically become a ticking time bomb in motion, living every single day ready to explode. As humans, we would vary in the capacity of how we explode.
So you wake up one morning to the news of your best friend committing suicide, you are shocked and wondered why they never spoke. They did, in a thousand ways you never understood or perhaps overlooked. We rush through life like we have a clue of how it is ending, ignoring vital things craving our attention, everyone is busy talking and no one listening. So, you spend an hour or more with an individual who you barely have an idea of how they are doing that day. In essence, the number of years or time spent is not a guarantee you know an individual so well. The lamest joke to tell will be that which involves another humans emotion, which unfortunately we find rather amusing how someone sulks all the time instead of asking the vital question, why?. Rather than aggravate a situation with your words, a listening ear might be all that is needed.
You do not have to reply to every message on WhatsApp and view all status before paying attention to that person physically present. It is quite tough to do because we live online with our jobs and information to catch up with, but we could silence those gadgets for an hour and pay attention to things offline. In life, how we live offline is all that matters, the memories made are incomparable.
The constant struggle in this century makes it all the more difficult to pay attention, we all struggle with our attention span on anything, so we are always in a rush to move on to the next thing and yes, catch up with the moving train of life. But a little discipline of paying attention to details and listening will go a long way in our time and age. One of the reasons I hold some of my friends who pay me maximum attention no matter how many times I come knocking at their doors with the tiniest of all problems, a skill I admire in one of my friends Bello Gbadebo.
Age and change are like Siamese twins, quite inseparable because age will change and changes bring a new age to everyone, then why run through a life that will pass when you have all the leisure to walk at your pace, why chase the moving train that never stops until it gets to its destination. Why seek another human perfection when the only image you might fully understand is yours, we are the perfection we seek and the uniqueness we find. There should be no reason to seek the approval of individuals who did not make us exist. So, why we enjoy the blessings of the century let us realize it is one of many centuries there is and many more to come.
I have lived a few decades to understand our fears are nothing but mere imagination of our mind. If we fear to fail, then we fail to succeed, if we fear to die, then we do not live. Whatever fears we have, it is the little spice in life that makes our stories a tasty one to tell. Try not to give yourself unrealistic expectation, because life itself is too short for seconds spent on nothing.
