Depression is a Luxury

Has anyone else noticed that the richer our country gets, the more depressed it gets? 

I'll start with my normal disclaimer...there are people who are depressed for clinical reasons and/or for situational reasons.  This blog doesn't apply to them.  But what about the rest of the country?  Depression in all of its manifestations (suicide, cutting, drugs, alchohol) is epidemic in the United States.  We are the saddest rich people in the world!

I have a theory.  Of course I have a theory, or why would I bother writing about it?  My theory is that we have forgotten basic human needs and are trying to replace them with 'stuff'.  Instead of a cup of tea with the neighbor, now it is an email or a text.  Wait, neighbor?  Who is your neighbor?  Do you know?  I don't.  I have friends.  I am lucky to be blessed with lots of very good friends, perhaps that is why I am not depressed.  But still, I drive right past my best friend's house on my way home from work every day without stopping in, even if I'm going home to an empty house and all my chores are done.  Ironically, often the first thing I do when I get home is email her.  How does that make any sense at all?

But this isn't just my normal rant about electronics replacing human contact, this is about how we are failing our children and ourselves and turning our country into a bunch of pill popping hypochondriacs with 'issues.'  Our children get loads of birthday and Christmas gifts, but often little of our time and attention.  We send them off to their rooms, equiped with TV, computer,  video games and smart phones, but don't spend time talking to them, teaching them critical thinking skills. 

They get so much so soon that they don't learn the excitement of anticipation; instant gratification is the norm.  They get so much with so little effort that they don't learn how much more they would enjoy and appreciate something they actually earned and bought for themselves.  We are so busy preserving their childhood and protecting them from the big scary world that they don't learn the skills to function in that world on their own.  We hover over them, answering their every question, requiring them to do nothing, doing their homework for them, all the while teaching them to expect others to do for them, so they don't have to do it themselves.   We offer them no challenges and no labor; therefore their leisure is meaningless.  There is no uptime to offset the downtime; there is just time. 

We forget that a basic human need is to live a productive and useful life.  People need to be needed.  They need to be industrious.  They need to be useful.  People need a purpose.  I believe this is a major cause of depression.  We have so stressed the value of leisure time and rest, that we have become a lazy culture.  We spend so much time mindlessly in front the of the TV or computer 'resting' that we forget that we haven't done anything to be resting from.  We are resting from resting.  We are tired from inactivity.  An object at rest tends to stay at rest...a basic law of physics.

Our jobs as adults are often sedentary and/or unfulfilling.   We can't see the point in what we are doing.  We do not see a contribution to society from what we do day to day.  We fill out forms, answer phones and check boxes without thinking about what we are contributing to, who we might be helping, how we make a difference in the world.  Some jobs simply don't.  We are just passing the hours putting money into someone else's pockets.  It is no wonder people are depressed.  But most jobs have the potential to be at least a little fulfilling; if you could just see past the day to day, put a smile on your face and actually try to help that person on the phone or your coworker in the next cubicle how much richer might your day be? 

I don't care if you are a cashier at a grocery store or a CEO, you can make a difference to the people around you.  You can pass the time drolly scanning one item after another, or you can look your customer in the eye and smile, make small talk, get to know them a little--you'd be surprised how much faster your workday might go.  Sure, some jobs have built in satisfaction...I would guess that nurses and teachers and firefighters have a far lower percentile of depression even though the pay is crap.  But most jobs have the potential to satisfy if you bother to look for it; if the job didn't have purpose it most likely wouldn't exist, but if it just isn't there, move on...  at least try to improve your situation.

As a culture, we have put value on inactivity.  It is a sign of success or at least power.  If you have time to be lazy, you are powerful.  It doesn't seem to matter if you are collecting welfare or being supported by your spouse while you laze around getting lazier, and fatter, and more and more depressed.  The point seems to be in doing as little as possible.  I actually hear people brag about this.  Employed people bragging about how they do nothing at work.  Unemployed people trying to work the system to stay unemployed and draw a paycheck.  Unworking mothers not marrying the fathers of their children so they can stay on foodstamps.  Conversely, I hear other people bragging about how very busy they are; how they don't have time to help with this or that, or even to catch their breath; yet in the next sentence they are talking about the TV show they watched last night.

We teach our children from a very young age to value leisure above labor.  To glory in a handout instead of a success. To want everything right now instead of savoring anticipation.   Long gone are piggy banks to save up for that special something.  Now it is, 'give it to me now and I will pay you back later (maybe)'.  As parents we feel pressured to give in to this...after all, we don't want our children to suffer or be castouts, we are held hostage by 'all the other kids' ... we are preserving their childhood at the risk of their future happiness and overall satisfaction with life.  Their ability to simply enjoy being alive and productive.   We teach them entitlement. We take away thier right to feel important.

I have often thought about the mothers of past generations.  Generations of families that so frequently lost children too young.  I have wondered how those mothers kept going, often losing multiple children to illness or accidents.  I wondered how they carried on day to day without simply falling apart.  I do not believe for one minute that they loved their children any less than we love ours today. 

What I do believe is that they didn't have the luxury of falling apart; of taking time to grieve; of being depressed about it for long.  No matter what bad thing happened in their lives, they still had purpose.  They still had to do their part to keep the family fed, the farm working, the house clean.  There weren't electric stoves and toasters and vaccum cleaners.  There wasn't sliced bread from the grocery store.  Everything took time and by the time they could sit down to read or rest at the end of the day, they had earned their leisure. The grieving were allowed to show outward manifestations of their grief, such as wearing black, but they weren't given the option to stop living. 

In the past it was only rich women who had fainting spells and were of a delicate nature.  The poor and the minorities didn't have that luxury any more than they had the luxury of wallowing in their grief.  They had purpose--their purpose was survival and the survival of their families.   No government was going to give them handouts.  Living on charity was shameful.   I'm sure it is the same in undeveloped countries still today.


In the United States today, everyone is given the luxury of depression.  Is this progress?