A great many people will wake up this morning, hold the short, standing conversation with their own heaviness — and then, most likely, take a deep breath, get up, and function.
And you know what? They'll function just fine. Some of them excellently. They are parents, teachers, engineers, managers — the list is long and quiet and reaches into every corner.
The literature calls it "high-functioning depression."
It's a bit strange to attach the adjective "high" to so low a feeling, but that's what professional terms are for — so we don't have to think.
So, high-functioning depression is on the table today. What is it exactly?
We're not talking about heavy, medicated depression. Just a "mild" one. An existential flatness that attached itself to the soul years ago, when life became too tangled and too heavy. You learn to live with it, brother.
Suddenly you notice you haven't enjoyed life in a long while.
Suddenly you ask yourself, "When was the last time I felt carefree joy for more than half an hour?"
And you have no answer.
A great many normal people make peace with an abnormal state every single morning. If that's your private feeling — you are evidently not alone: research keeps pointing to a steep rise in low mood and loneliness across recent decades.
And now you're all waiting for this piece to end with some dazzling solution, a knockout sentence that delivers relief.
It won't. In fact, there's a decent chance that this exact fantasy — the expectation of a quick elimination of distress — is itself one of the engines of the modern epidemic.
I think we all host a hidden philosophical duel between the mind's two attorneys: the one who promises us happiness, and the one who wants us to learn to carry suffering.
Let me say it more bombastically: your stance toward human suffering will sweepingly affect your mental health.
In human language: recent decades (courtesy of the feeds) have cultivated the fantasy that if we just do certain things, reach certain insights, manage our money a certain way and make certain decisions — we can eliminate every source of suffering and live in permanent happiness.
That's the first attorney. Say what you will about him — his public relations are excellent, and his marketing team keeps pumping in new clients.
The fellow facing him in the mind's courtroom is a rather... tiresome type. Not one who plays well on camera. His message? There will always be regions of suffering in your life. You cannot erase them. You can only make sure you are strong enough to carry them. His clothes are rumpled and he sweeps nobody off their feet at three-day transformation workshops — but he keeps citing what the happiness researchers keep finding: low expectations are half the secret.
Twenty years ago I decided which attorney would represent me. Consider for yourselves who's collecting your retainer. I'll respect any decision.
But remember this: mild depression is not only a product of life's load. It is, above all, a product of unrealistic expectations.
And don't make peace with it. It does not improve on its own.
If it's been sitting on you for a long while — talk to someone who does this for a living. That, too, is what "I'll manage" looks like.