Published in Invisible Illness
I barely know the person that I’ve spent the most time with in my life. I can look into a mirror and have trouble recognizing the person standing in front of it.
My daily regiment includes lying awake for hours until exhaustion grasps onto me, struggling to stir in the morning, and then having an even tougher time rolling off the covers and trudging out of bed. I trek toward the bathroom to dehydrate and stare blankly in the mirror at the stranger that is me.
Depression has always been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, whether it was dormant or storming with full velocity. The claws have dug in and dug in deep. It affects my waking and sleeping life, like when I’m trying to do work, write, play video games, it's almost like I’m trudging through mud while wearing lead shoes. In sleep, or lack thereof, I toss, turn, and find no respite, and no matter how much I sleep I wake up exhausted. With the depression doesn’t come sadness. With the depression comes a cold distant feeling. It isn't despairing, it isn’t fear, it isn’t sadness, it’s cold, unfeeling, alien.
That is the world that I live in, alien. Cold.
I spend hours on a character creation screen trying to find the right mix of character that just fits me, but I never can, I never feel content. I search for a basketball team to support, that suits me, I can’t, I search for a set of superpowers that suits me, I can’t, I search for a passion, something I’m good at, enjoy, love, I can’t.
The depression doesn’t just sap my energy, it saps my identity. It takes who I am and becomes who I am.
In this constant rut, I struggle to find some meaning, some depth, anything. Chuck Palahniuk said this on the topic in his novel Fight Club, “our generation has had no Great War, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression our lives.” The world that we live in focuses on individual meanings, from personal God’s, passions, reasons for being. There is no huge beast to overcome, no uniting force to hold us together. The novel itself focuses on the what happens when men in a modern age have no meaning, the narrator fabricates a *spoiler warning* alternate self that has and does everything that he would never be able to do. Other men follow him in droves like moths to a flame or like cultists to Cthulhu because he offers an enemy, a thing to beat down and defeat, whether it be themselves in the individual “fight clubs” or something greater, with much violence and destruction.
Depression has grown quickly and consistently as shown in a study done by Columbia University. The study shows the meteoric growth in depression cases for young Americans starting at the age of 12. The world can feel uncaring, indifferent, and meaningless. The unsure future for many young people, myself included can be overwhelming, deserting, empty. The Columbia study goes on to explain that even with the number of depression cases going up the treatment stays around the same lending to more hopelessness.
A world with no meaning is cold and harsh. It’s dark and pointless. French philosopher Albert Camus in response to this understanding posed the question, “should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” This is a summation on his philosophy, absurdism. He poses that life is inherently absurd and pointless. In his novel, The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus, after pissing off the gods is punished to roll a boulder up a hill, only for it to fall back down for all eternity. Camus relates this to the inherent meaninglessness of life, using this metaphor to highlight how absurd life can truly be. Camus poses that a fulfilling life is still possible, however, as he poses that as Sisyphus can find joy in rolling the boulder up the hill each day, we too can find happiness in spite of the meaninglessness, not because of it.
The controversial German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche poses a similar worldview. Nietzsche is known as the father of modern nihilism, and is known for his adage, “God is dead, and we have killed him.” In this statement, he is highlighting the new more enlightened age that was drifting farther from divinity and more toward scientific, empirical fact. According to Nietzsche this was the beginning of the death of meaning and thus comes nihilism which is philosophically defined as, “extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence.
French philosopher René Descartes has a different view on existence and meaning to the individual. He posed the thought Cogito Ergo Sum or I think therefore I am. This is his insight into existence. He supported any school of thought as long as it meant thinking and questioning, he believed that the pure question of existence meant existing and that was good enough for him. This challenges Nietzsche’s philosophy of nihilism and his idea of the lack of existence.
Many others find meaning in a God that provides some form of endgame to an existence that may or may not be full of suffering. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard proposed the idea of alienation or a separation from God because we as people are living too much in the world and not out of it. Kierkegaard, often coined as the “Father of Existentialism,” posed that the loss of meaning came with the distance from God very similarly to Nietzsche’s “God is dead,” adage. Kierkegaard believes that meaning was lost when people drifted from the subjective to the empirically objective. Being a believer of God he criticized a way of thinking that purely focused on the rational pushing people to try to mix objective and subjective worldviews.
Thomas Aquinas, an Italian theological thinker, was one thinker who focused on God. He claimed he was not a philosopher because all philosophers fell short in the one true truth in God. His position on the meaning in life came from the adage that “essence proceeds existence.” Think of a hammer, when you set out to make a hammer you start with an idea of what that hammer is going to be used for. The same, in Thomas’ eyes, can be said of people, as we are the tools that God has some plan for, some use or meaning.
French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre offered a reversed take on Aquinas’ worldview of essence versus existence. Sartre subscribed to the belief that in people existence proceeds essence. Believing in a post-God world Sartre believed that people had to come up with their own meaning in life without a god to give it to them. He is known for the phrase, “man is condemned to freedom.” With this, he means that without a pure guiding goal man will turn in on himself in despair.
Meaning in practical terms is everywhere, yet depression and hopelessness persist. Why? Even though knowledge so many trudges through daily life with little to no direction. Most philosophies offer no respite, no happy ending or even an ending at all. American writer Elizabeth Wurtzel posed the thought on human survival, “That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.” Without any meaning, drive or passion is there ever a light at the end of the tunnel? If there is no God with a plan for your life what is there to drive? Is there an embrace in the absurdity? Should I kill myself or drink coffee?