RAMBLE #13: DEPRESSION - WISE WORDS FROM YODA

I went to mass last yesterday and I heard something I wouldn't normally hear from a priest: quoting Yoda from Star Wars.

He said, "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." Based off the looks of the people at church, they either:

1.) Had no idea who Yoda was.
2.) Haven't seen a Star Wars movie at all.
3.) genuinely didn't care.

These words struck me because it brought me back to the time I was going through depression. Through introspection, I realized that each of these stages brought me to depression.




The first one is FEAR. I'm a person that CRAVES admiration and validation. As I go back through my past I realize it was mainly because I never had any when I was younger (kinda immature, eh?) I'm the eldest of three siblings and two of my siblings were academically smarter than I was hence they got most of the praise from my parents and they are always talked about with relatives. They were way more good looking than I am. When I hit puberty, I had pimples and hair everywhere while they got slimmer, taller and better skin. I had very low self esteem and as a result, I was never confident enough to be myself. I always had to pretend I was somebody I'm not. Even to this day, I have this tendency which gets me in trouble or sometimes help propel me forward. This bad habit all stems from the FEAR of losing the attention of others.

The second is ANGER. For the times that I couldn't get people's attention, I automatically get ANGRY at myself because when I look in the mirror, all I see is the face of a failure. There was already this silent sense of doubt hovering over me whenever I have to complete a task at work, home or for myself. I always expect to fail and when I do, I automatically think to myself that I'm a 'fucking failure' that has no place in this world.

Anger then brings me to HATE wherein I start shoving away people in my life, isolating myself because I already have this mentality that I am no good to others, so why bother with this life. I refuse to join social activities, talk to family, hell, I even didn't speak to my wife at times. And the most frightening of them all is that I hated myself that I wanted to erase my existence.

And the final stage is SUFFERING wherein I've turned to the dark side and was entertaining thoughts of ending my life. The only thing that kept from doing it are the thought of the things that I wanted to do in the near future.

How did I get out? Yoda said it himself: "Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose." Basically what I did was that I stopped giving a fuck if people liked me or not. So what if they think I'm a loser? As long as the people that genuinely care for me think I'm awesome, that's all that matters.

I trained myself to accept that I cannot please everyone; I just need to focus my energy on those that do, to get that sense of belonging and not the feeling of loneliness.

If you're still going through depression: hang in there bud. People will be here to help but you need to realize what is causing the depression so that you can focus your energy towards fighting it. I love you and good luck my dude.