What's truly depressing about a the lack-luster life is that so many are living it.  Days like a run-on sentence, leading us to believe whatever we choose because we lack the human connections that help challenge our mental dialogue.  I keep questioning why?  What ill-fated sharp turn was taken onto the path of nothingness?  Or was it even a turn at all?  Maybe arriving at nowhere was just a course that was set; a sail hoisted by someone or something without much communication of how or why? And yet here we are, together at nowhere, living isolated in the village of suffering.  An army of nothings void of our something...  

In the wake of all that's depressing I find myself annoyed at the self-help community. I'm hung-up on Anthony Bourdain, the Parkland School shooting, Nia Wilson's murder, my mom's death...  I'm emotionally coping with my father's dementia, my unemployment, and knowing that soon, our dog will have to be put down.  I can keep going with sob stories but that's not my point. We all have hardships and it's a disservice to the human condition to line them up in comparison.  Everyone is hurting.  Our friends are hurting.  And more than anything, our relationships are hurting. This pain has never been more visible than in convenient statements like "thinking of you".   Our lifelines have been reduced to lip-service as if sending "thoughts and prays with love and light" was somehow enough? 

Surely we recognize these statements do not suffice but more than anything it's telling how we lack emotional capacity for others.  What's worse, is that we have given-up on the cause.  We've stopped trying to effectively connect and diminish our discomforts by mindless scrolling.  We occasionally pause for words of convenience leaving benign messages like "sending love", content with ourselves and our broadcast of care.  But the truth is, those voices and those prays; they are just noise. It's just clutter in the ether for that desperate person to sift through.  

Adding to the volume doesn't help the person searching for ears that listen.  These drive-by comments perpetuate more hardship.  If you don't have time, then yeah, just scroll.  And if you don't know what to say, just say that! Treating discomfort as something to push past as quickly as possible steals space from recovery and robs us of connection and knowing ourselves through others.  We need to stop treating depression as a problem to hurry  past and rather dig-in some and explore the roots of where the nothingness lives.  We need to explore the bottom and understand how pain is stabilized and get familiar with the things that hold it in place.  Ignoring this only compounds the emotional debt.

Not everyone can move on and not everyone wants to; at least, not yet...  That voice of pain has fallen on deft ears and the whirl of society races leaving many chasing recovery which is not recovery.  Chasing anything is not rest and this systemic push to move-on is eroding the fibers that connect us in the human experience. The rush to move past sadness is falsely conditioning cultural attitudes by implying that "evolving" is somehow more important than being... 

My own wanderings through the nothingness have me bound to believe that everyone craves someone that understands.  The soul of humanity is tethered to personal connections and therefore we have a responsibility to foster opportunities that bring us together. And as much as we likely don't hold the answers for others but we can still hold space for them.  Space to grieve, space for despair, space to explore pain without judgement... Sometimes you just need space in order to connect; a moment of quiet so your something can be heard.

I'll be holding space for some spoon carving therapy at The Guild this Saturday.  The class is an introduction to carving but my hope is that it evolves into an introduction to community.  I  have big dreams for starting a carving club and what that could mean for communities everywhere.  It's mostly just a dream but I hear, life is but one anyway so, why not?  It's just a matter of time...

Make some to take some.