this feels like listening to the sky explain itself. sadness as storm, depression as stillness. one shakes the feathers, the other folds them until even flight is forgotten.
what you wrote holds a truth most overlook: sadness is not a punishment, but a proof of love. to hurt is to care; to ache is to remember that life still stirs inside.
depression is different. it is not storm but vacuum, not music but the absence of song. and yet those small rituals. the ticket, the walk, the bamboo dragon. are like tiny feathers scattered across the silence, reminders that forward still exists even when the wind does not.
maybe that’s the hidden grace: sadness means you lived, you loved, you let yourself be pierced by the world. depression tries to erase that memory. your words remind me sadness is not a weakness. it’s the sky’s way of proving it can still rain.☔️
Wow. This is beautiful. You've described the difference between sadness and depression very simply, but with crystal clarity. The solution You offer, is also simple and clear. Short. Sweet. Sublime.
Exactly. I have had depression for almost 15 years. I'm way better, although ironically my current state of affairs these last years could say otherwise. But I still have this shadow following me around, it's another kind of shadow, not the Jungian one. Better yet, it's a black flame, sometimes when the wind blows and the flame starts to flick, it turns into a black hole, a void of absolute negation. Nowadays it doesn't last long and I'm used to feeling infinite dread, emptiness and existential horror. Depression is a general term that doesn't quite grasp the overall experience. I use it for the sake of communication and convenience. Maybe I don't even have depression anymore or ever had and I'm still using this term unaware. Since I do have other problems as well. I'm actually open to admitting other theories. It does seem to be more than it seems or another thing altogether. Sometimes I have, sometimes I don't. I don't know. Honestly having depression it’s not a badge I want to carry around forever and I’m ready to throw it out into the river. But either way I’m already used to taking the cold heat of my black flame or to the sudden free fall into my black-hole.
What I do know is that people think that depression is just sadness as you point out, which is a big misunderstanding. Extreme sadness and suicidal thoughts are when you are feeling better in comparison. Sadness does exist and it's part of the process, but it's like falling deeper and deeper into this black metal mash pit. It's very hard to explain or to find metaphors even. I had some theories and reflections of this over the years. It's also a very complex and multiple experience that doesn't stay the same, but at the same time it does and it's very paradoxical. It's the negation of the negation of the negation... Ad infinitum. And it's both a mental and physical sensation, once you are in this state of mind, you simply can't avoid it and force yourself to change your mind, just ride it until it ends. One reason why it's also difficult to explain. Although I do say that, indeed in fact you can change your state of mind and actually do change it. But once you are experiencing this mind state, the mind state you are in is the mind state you are in, you won't change from the mind state, because it will just stay at the same state you were before. So the change it's more a quantum leap so to speak, only when it happens is that it happens, but it's there in potency. If you catch my drift.
I suppose that maybe usually if you are a sane and healthy person you won't realize this and this won't be a problem, because people are always jumping from state to state unaware of themselves. It's automatic and efficient. But somehow to increase the sadomasochist experience of this anti-cosmic machine the Hellraiser gods of pain and pleasure decided it was a good idea to make you self conscious of your own mental heart beat and just like a heart beat you won't control it directly, unless you are master yoga guru or ninja. Which in the end is also exactly what you need to become whether you like it or not. Because you don't have any choice or you simply laid down and wait to die or disappear, but your emotional, mental and bodily experience, mind, body, maybe even spirit won't let you anyway. But I’m just rambling and freestyling what comes to mind about this, so it could be another explanation completely.
A good example I think is the Mugen Jigogoku, Infinity Hell with infinity suffering. From Buddhist Japanese Hell mythology. But your Bamboo Dragon seems a good correspondence somehow to the amount of mental (spiritual?) brute strength we have to pull ourselves from the entrails of Earth itself, from Hades and rise as a daimon of a fallen legendary hero, an elemental with a body made from the all the material that we took with ourselves as we ascend, like a powerful earthly/ethereal Bamboo Dragon, resistant, but flexible and can grow/manifest/create itself anywhere it needs or wants.
I think this confusion over sadness with depression has a lot to do with our views of what happiness is and also how many people never get close to experiencing something like that, and don't even have nightmares. Because this also something more akin to deep introspection, isolation, loneliness, sadness, melancholy, etc., so it's indeed something that relates directly to Saturn and Pluto energies, so it is destructive, intoxicating and morbid too, extreme slow and low vibrations, but also fatalistic and relentless, it always reaches its destination whatever it takes. And we can see how the pandemics affect these people's mental health that wasn't used to be at least alone with their own thoughts. The common view on happiness is the absence of pain or to numb pain and all strong sensations plus eternal pleasure and joy. Worst yet, making happiness the synonymous of bio-chemicals process in your brain and body. Are we really just animals that a simple serotonin molecule is enough to say we achieve happiness as Man and that molecule is happiness? Maybe it is that. Sometimes I catch myself thinking that it is. I also don’t know. But that common herd-like view certainly doesn’t help much in the long run.
Beautifully put into words. I m swimming in a melancholic sea my whole life.I love too much, I cling and I cry about little or not so little things a lot. I m not depressed. I m here to feel.
In sadness the heart is open and full of prana. In depression the mind virus takes over and the heart is in lockdown, starved of prana. I have experienced a lot of sadness in life, but never depression. Beautiful description.
Very well said. In that way sadness is definitely the weather and depression can be a place. So sadness can be changed (transmuted). But depression must be moved away from.
this feels like listening to the sky explain itself. sadness as storm, depression as stillness. one shakes the feathers, the other folds them until even flight is forgotten.
what you wrote holds a truth most overlook: sadness is not a punishment, but a proof of love. to hurt is to care; to ache is to remember that life still stirs inside.
depression is different. it is not storm but vacuum, not music but the absence of song. and yet those small rituals. the ticket, the walk, the bamboo dragon. are like tiny feathers scattered across the silence, reminders that forward still exists even when the wind does not.
maybe that’s the hidden grace: sadness means you lived, you loved, you let yourself be pierced by the world. depression tries to erase that memory. your words remind me sadness is not a weakness. it’s the sky’s way of proving it can still rain.☔️
Wow. This is beautiful. You've described the difference between sadness and depression very simply, but with crystal clarity. The solution You offer, is also simple and clear. Short. Sweet. Sublime.
And that’s……the rub. :P
Exactly. I have had depression for almost 15 years. I'm way better, although ironically my current state of affairs these last years could say otherwise. But I still have this shadow following me around, it's another kind of shadow, not the Jungian one. Better yet, it's a black flame, sometimes when the wind blows and the flame starts to flick, it turns into a black hole, a void of absolute negation. Nowadays it doesn't last long and I'm used to feeling infinite dread, emptiness and existential horror. Depression is a general term that doesn't quite grasp the overall experience. I use it for the sake of communication and convenience. Maybe I don't even have depression anymore or ever had and I'm still using this term unaware. Since I do have other problems as well. I'm actually open to admitting other theories. It does seem to be more than it seems or another thing altogether. Sometimes I have, sometimes I don't. I don't know. Honestly having depression it’s not a badge I want to carry around forever and I’m ready to throw it out into the river. But either way I’m already used to taking the cold heat of my black flame or to the sudden free fall into my black-hole.
What I do know is that people think that depression is just sadness as you point out, which is a big misunderstanding. Extreme sadness and suicidal thoughts are when you are feeling better in comparison. Sadness does exist and it's part of the process, but it's like falling deeper and deeper into this black metal mash pit. It's very hard to explain or to find metaphors even. I had some theories and reflections of this over the years. It's also a very complex and multiple experience that doesn't stay the same, but at the same time it does and it's very paradoxical. It's the negation of the negation of the negation... Ad infinitum. And it's both a mental and physical sensation, once you are in this state of mind, you simply can't avoid it and force yourself to change your mind, just ride it until it ends. One reason why it's also difficult to explain. Although I do say that, indeed in fact you can change your state of mind and actually do change it. But once you are experiencing this mind state, the mind state you are in is the mind state you are in, you won't change from the mind state, because it will just stay at the same state you were before. So the change it's more a quantum leap so to speak, only when it happens is that it happens, but it's there in potency. If you catch my drift.
I suppose that maybe usually if you are a sane and healthy person you won't realize this and this won't be a problem, because people are always jumping from state to state unaware of themselves. It's automatic and efficient. But somehow to increase the sadomasochist experience of this anti-cosmic machine the Hellraiser gods of pain and pleasure decided it was a good idea to make you self conscious of your own mental heart beat and just like a heart beat you won't control it directly, unless you are master yoga guru or ninja. Which in the end is also exactly what you need to become whether you like it or not. Because you don't have any choice or you simply laid down and wait to die or disappear, but your emotional, mental and bodily experience, mind, body, maybe even spirit won't let you anyway. But I’m just rambling and freestyling what comes to mind about this, so it could be another explanation completely.
A good example I think is the Mugen Jigogoku, Infinity Hell with infinity suffering. From Buddhist Japanese Hell mythology. But your Bamboo Dragon seems a good correspondence somehow to the amount of mental (spiritual?) brute strength we have to pull ourselves from the entrails of Earth itself, from Hades and rise as a daimon of a fallen legendary hero, an elemental with a body made from the all the material that we took with ourselves as we ascend, like a powerful earthly/ethereal Bamboo Dragon, resistant, but flexible and can grow/manifest/create itself anywhere it needs or wants.
I think this confusion over sadness with depression has a lot to do with our views of what happiness is and also how many people never get close to experiencing something like that, and don't even have nightmares. Because this also something more akin to deep introspection, isolation, loneliness, sadness, melancholy, etc., so it's indeed something that relates directly to Saturn and Pluto energies, so it is destructive, intoxicating and morbid too, extreme slow and low vibrations, but also fatalistic and relentless, it always reaches its destination whatever it takes. And we can see how the pandemics affect these people's mental health that wasn't used to be at least alone with their own thoughts. The common view on happiness is the absence of pain or to numb pain and all strong sensations plus eternal pleasure and joy. Worst yet, making happiness the synonymous of bio-chemicals process in your brain and body. Are we really just animals that a simple serotonin molecule is enough to say we achieve happiness as Man and that molecule is happiness? Maybe it is that. Sometimes I catch myself thinking that it is. I also don’t know. But that common herd-like view certainly doesn’t help much in the long run.
For so many years I did not know the difference.
Beautifully put into words. I m swimming in a melancholic sea my whole life.I love too much, I cling and I cry about little or not so little things a lot. I m not depressed. I m here to feel.
In sadness the heart is open and full of prana. In depression the mind virus takes over and the heart is in lockdown, starved of prana. I have experienced a lot of sadness in life, but never depression. Beautiful description.
Very well said. In that way sadness is definitely the weather and depression can be a place. So sadness can be changed (transmuted). But depression must be moved away from.