Things That Sometimes Help If You Have Depression by Scott Alexander
Managing Depression With Weightlifting? Or, How You Feel Is A Lie
This article is by Nick Horton, and it helped me a lot in two different ways. First it uses weightlifting as a foil to help deal with depression. Weightlifting is a good choice because it rewards practice and consistency, and the physical exertion is simply good for you and might help one sleep or feel better. But, more importantly, it is very common to feel very bad but still be able to perform a PR. This is a common experience, even for those not depressed. So by continuing to weightlift even when you feel bad, you begin to learn to not let the feeling of depression prevent you from doing things that you want to do.
Second, he starts the essay with a great analogy that compares living with depression to living a life of pointilism–it can look like a full life from the outside, but from the inside, there is an overaching feeling of nihilism.
Take a read, I personally can credit this essay for helping me live with depression.
On Responsibility
Responsibility is clearly related to rules and duty. To be responsible for others’ well being is the essence of responsibility. We all have requirements thrust upon us due to accidents of birth, among these include family and the expectations of family. On the other hand, this is one element of life in which we have little to no choice. Until we are 18, there is hardly any human who has control of what they do, what they value, who they listen to, and who they love.
On the one hand, this is a state of affairs which provides everyone with different amounts of luck, but there is no alternative. The best solution is to embrace the roles in which we have no choice, the way Sisyphus does in “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus. Only by affirmatively choosing why you must do can one assert control over one’s responsibilities.
Later in life, one naturally has more freedom, but you can also acquire more ralso and become constrained in a different way. ON the one hand, many of the new roles and responsibilities area freely chosen [at least partly]., On the other hand, once you have made the choice, the duties and requirements follow. There is thus a practical limitation on freedom.
Yet ,at the same time, responsibility is one possible foundation of meaning.
While responsibility can be suffocating, stressful, overwhelming, and crippling, it can also provide meaningful, structure, a sense of self-respect, inner calm, and the satisfaction of accomplishment.
Due to depression, I cannot be an effective engineer and cannot currently see myself dating, or studying, or completing graduate school. This represents a significant lost. Yet I am still a son, a brother, a friend. Responsibility is intricately linked
One must imagine Sisyphus happy
The original greek myth of Sisyphus.
Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus