I Have A Blog, How Odd.

Monday, June 11, 2007 @ 9:15 PM

I'm under 45 years old & i am not really Yugoslavian

How often do you hear yourself say, “i’m depressed”, “i feel down” or even “i am one depressed dude” (which may be followed by some serious head-banging). I’m going to generalise and say, we all do it quite often. I mean, i hear it ALL the time! From friends, family, colleagues, my brain, random people on the street….everywhere really. This could be a result of one of two things. Either the entire human race is suffering from depression, or in fact we tend to be overdramatic and misuse the word.

*flips open a dictionary*

According to a random dictionary, depression is ….sadness, gloom, emotional dejection, despair, pessimism… so is someone really going to argue that we ALL suffer from depression like ALL the time? Nah...i don’t think so. Let us ponder for a moment as to why we think we may be depressed…hmm ok i’m done pondering, I’ll tell you why. This may shock/offend you…but it’s a fact. We are ungrateful. Yup, that’s it. A universal truth of mankind and it is the main contributory factor to our so-called “depression”.

We get dragged into this warped version of reality, in which material things take over our lives. Instead of “Subhanallah, Insya Allah, Masya Allah”, it’s the slightly selfish “Me, Me, Me”. We are forgetful creatures, us humans. Not the dope i can’t believe i forgot your anniversary thingy kind, but more like i’ve just managed to get out of this life threatening situation, so lets jump into a pool of flesh eating piranhas.

It takes less than a moment for us to forget what we have, and think about what we don’t have. Perhaps its society that has made us this way, but that doesn’t make it more acceptable. There are so many things that trigger our “depression”…like not achieving the grades we want, arguments with people, not being able to afford things we want, not being happy with the way we look, feeling life is unfair…if I tried to list everything i’d be sitting here for the next 50 posts i reckon. The pattern you may or may not have noticed by now is that our depression tends to be a result of general discontentment. It’s sad to think about.

The only way we can get out of this trap is by changing our attitude. This may not necessarily mean changing the glasses or contacts you wear, but more of your perception of the world. For example, if you get results for an exam and it turns out that you do worse than you hoped…the usual way to react would be to;

a) cry
b) get angry and curse yourself/examiner or
c) cry and then get angry and curse yourself/examiner.

But, instead of thinking…My life is over! My parents are going to kill me, or if they don’t i’ll do it myself! Being a Muslim means we need to handle the situation in a different way. Even with patience and tolerance perhaps. It’s not an ‘I get what I want or it’s the end of the world’ situation…but more of ‘I shall take this as an experience, lesson from God, a test if you may’. It’s not about the situations we get into, but more of how we deal with it.

It doesn’t even have to be a situation; in fact it could just be that you are unhappy about your nose or something. We do get depressed about things like that too and this issue is one we’ve all either had or have seen others have. I know it’s easier said…but when you look in the mirror and think ‘Woah dude! Like has that thing expanded!’ think again, as i’m sure it hasn’t.

We have to teach ourselves to say that wonderful word that we often forget… ‘Alhamdulillah’ Before thinking, before complaining, before we open our mouths to voice our depressions about our noses’…let us say ‘Alhamdulillah’. Is it not better to have a nose, and be able to smell the wonders of the aromas that come from the kitchen when your mum is cooking…or the scent of familiar things? So you have a big nose? You’ll get over it. It’s not something to get depressed about. If you want to see real depression i reckon you should go switch on a news channel…Paris Hilton getting jailed is depressing.

Just kidding.