I am depressed. Or I should say I find very many aspects of life depressing. One morning last week, I woke up super early to get ready for a client meeting. Something popped up on my feed and to my own devastation, I read the news.
It was a report about a child sexual abuse court case. The father was given 15 years and stripped of political rights for 3 years, and the mother given 9 years and stripped of political rights for a year. Both are banned from seeing their children anymore. I could feel my heart cringe up in knots as I read the article, and even though I told myself to stop reading because it would make me sick, I could not stop reading.
The parents left the rural areas to go find work in the city, and left the kids to grandparents back at the rural home. A common occurence in this country. One summer, the kids went to the city to visit their parents. Then hell descended upon the eldest daughter, then 14 years old. Father raped her, and while she was screaming, the mother put her hand over the daughter’s mouth to stop the girl from being too loud. Apparently, the mother had told the girl, that it was her and her sister’s duty to service the father.
I puked inside. I didn’t know whether to cry because I felt so hurt for the girl, or to be furious about the adults’ heartlessness. I thought the sentence was very mild – those parents should be paraded down the streets, have stones thrown at them, publicly shamed, and then hung.
The next day, I read an article on the New Yorker about countries starting to mine the moon for resources and how many billions of dollars were reserved for these projects. I could feel the fury boil inside of me. Have we not wrecked earth enough? Do we have to go about messing with other planets? And if 1% of that billions of dollars could go into educating people about child’s rights or protecting children from inhumane adults?
But who am I to say anything? I drive a car that pollutes into the air and eat beef still.
The state of humanity feels hopeless. I feel hopeless for the world. All these great international organizations with annual summits with famous speakers and important people meeting to try to change the world for better – and how many of them are simply a cover up to keep the in-group, in, and the rest out, so that power concentrates in the hands of a few? How many of them fly business class or privately with a security detail to attend these meetings?
Do people not see through these ploys? Are we all clouded in our vision? Worse, we all want to become part of the in-group, myself included. So, again, who am I to say anything. Our cravings for vanity and to not be unimportant propels us into the endless loops of work and trying hard and keeping up appearances, with senses of helplessness and hopelessness lurking not far underneath. Maybe setting up Bearapy with a social mission and a cause is a way to make myself feel better about myself, as if my corrosive existence on earth is appeased by trying to make some parts of it better, or be seen to anyways.
I have been thinking about lots of things, and hardly a time I do not think – to my own detriment. Is depression even really an illness? Why do we call it a “disorder”? Is burnout only an individual state – is not the epidemic numbers of burnout, depression, and anxiety in organizations all part of massive projections from those who cannot face themselves onto those who are more in touch with their inner selves and emotions?
Some people have to hold the depression so that others can hold the hope. Polarities and yet without them, how will everything in between exist?
I have no answers and yet it seems all people want from me are answers. They come to hear me talk to find an answer. They come to a Bearapy workshop, expecting a solution. They look for a coach to find the answer. They want the leadership gurus to provide the step-by-step guide to brilliance.
I have not been writing much, though I have all these emails I sent myself sitting in my inbox, of reflections and random lines I thought would be cool. I wanted to respond to the 996 fiasco in China, but by now the news is no long news. I wanted to write some letters to the editors, but again, I am by now 6 months late.
Do I give up or do I try to write? Do I give up or continue to mine myself for some hope?
I don’t know if “depression” is the best way to describe my state, and yet I do not know how else I would describe it.
Either way, it feels good to blurt out this incoherent concoction of words. For once, I really do not care if you read this or not, and whether you see what I see or not, and definitely do not give a fxxk if you agree with me or not.
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