contemplation

They say about 7 million women in the US are suffering from depression and that one out of every five women can expect to develop depression at some point in her life. They also say depression most frequently affects women between the ages of 25 and 44. Does that put me at a greater risk of being depressed? It sure does. Does that mean I am depressed? Probably not. But the statistics are scary enough and they scare me.

Do I have any reason to be depressed? Of course not. I’ve been loved and nurtured all my life, I live and love and enjoy life, I have a husband who loves me, parents who are proud of me, friends who care for me, a past that I cherish, a present that is worth every moment and a future that holds promise. Yet, somewhere in between the narrow crevices of my life are failures and disappointments that remind me of things that I wanted and did not get, of dreams that I had and could not realize, of hopes and aspirations that I tried to live up to and could not reach high enough. Does that make me a success or a failure?

There’s a saying that goes "Reach for the moon, even if you miss you will land among the stars". But what if you wanted a piece of the moon and nothing else would fit the bill? Worse still, what if you wanted to give someone you love a piece of the moon and only ended up getting a star. Would that be alright? You could say, that’s not bad, you did get a star, and it’s bright and shiny and looks kind of like a diamond. But it still isn’t the moon, is it? And you could try and try and try to reach for the moon, but what if you cannot reach high enough? What if no matter how hard you tried, the moon was still out of reach and you could never reach it? You could say, well you tried hard and that’s good enough. But it isn’t. You still could not give the person you love the one thing that would have made a difference. Does that qualify you as a failure? Or would you still claim that it was a success since you ended up getting the star?

We all grow up with dreams, with hopes and aspirations. We want, we demand so much out of life. We have big dreams, major goals. Kind of like big rocks that we put into a glass jar and fill up to the brim. And then we have these other aspirations, kind of like sand that we can pour into the glass jar even when it has been filled up with rocks and still find room for so much sand. It’s those space filling sandy dreams that fill our life and make it whole. And when they start running out there is very little that is left holding your life together. When we look at someone’s life from outside we only tend to see the jar with the big rocks. We never realize how much sand they are holding in between the rocks and how much the sand means to making life hold together. That is the essence of life. And that is what makes life worth living.