At some point in our lives most of us will come to a moment of uncertainty. For some it will be more than a moment, and it will cloud every small space in your world; school, work, relationships. Every bit will become hazy, dark, and suddenly you can't remember why you try to do anything. Nothing will seem to be worth the amount of effort it would take to pick yourself up off the ground and pretend to be another content soul going through the motions.
Maybe you won't ever have to feel your heart sink to the ground as others do. Perhaps you'll only witness it in the eyes of a loved one, or hear it in their words. If you're lucky it won't touch your life at all. But for those it does, depression can make it feel like you've never been happy at any given time in your life. You might think "maybe I was just pretending to be happy", and you honestly will not be able to remember a time when you weren't sad.
This is why I believe it is a good idea to document your happiness.
This week I watched HBO's Documentary of the one-man play "Every Brilliant Thing" from Duncan MacMillan. The play, performed by Jonny Donahoe, chronicles the life of a man who was introduced very early to the face of depression. At the beginning of the play a 7-year old boy sits in the Hospital waiting room after his mother's first suicide attempt. As the young boy processes the given information and comes to realize the magnitude of his mother's illness he resigns himself to cheering her up with a list of all the "brilliant things" life has to offer.
After his mother demonstrates that she will not pay mind to it, the boy keeps his list, and works on it for himself. Every time he thinks of something new (like "ice cream" or "nice old people") that makes him happy he adds it to the list. As he grows older, the things that make him happy become more obscured and specific ("listening to dad's old records"). There are even times where he cannot think of anything new to put down. The man keeps his list throughout the ups and downs of his lifetime. Working on it even in episodes of his own depression, the man continues to add to his list. The idea is to keep it going as long as you can. There is no order from one "brilliant thing" to the next, there is no numbered goal.
For each and every person depression is different. There are mild forms of depression that can last a short amount of time, as well as major or chronic depression, which has the potential to last for years on end. There is Bipolar Disorder (or manic-depression), which is a crippling fluctuation between hyperactivity (and in some cases elation) and extremely low-activity periods of depression, Psychotic Depression, Atypical Depression and many more. No two people who have suffered depression will have the same exact story. Each form of depression is different in nature, and there are many ways these illnesses come into our lives. The one factor that seems to bind each person's story to the next is a loss of light in life, or the ability to detect it.
The proposal made in "Every Brilliant Thing" which stuck to me, is the one made in the continuity of the list. Even as the man grew up to face his own problems, travel his own path in the illness of his mother, he clung to the belief that life is brilliant. In the moments he couldn't remember if he had ever been happy, the list would prove otherwise. There were things that made you happy before this moment and there will be things in life that make you happy after this moment.
If you are a survivor of depression, know a family member who suffers depression, or have never even had a down day in your life, I encourage you to challenge yourself with the "brilliant things" list. It can be so easy to observe everything that sucks in the average day, but you would be surprised by the way a list such as this can change your perspective of the world around you. When you look for good things, for the parts of life that make you genuinely happy, you will find them.
It's still January (and let's be honest, it's never too late in the year to start a resolution), why not begin 2017 by documenting everything good in your world? The rules are simple; there are no rules. You can list something every day, but you don't have to. It would be difficult to make the list in ABC order, but that doesn't mean you can't. Decorate the paper! Or don't. Make it for you.
I'll start:
1. Unexpected opportunities
2. Matchmaking
3. My boyfriend's laugh
4. Black and white portraits
5. Everything Star Wars
The man in the play made his list 1,000,000 entries long.
Let's see how far we can make it.
