First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

The Virtue of Survival

Life, as Scott Peck reminds us, echoing centuries of Buddhist wisdom, is difficult; that is the nature of the enterprise. As an intellectual proposition, few sensible people would argue with this observation; we might want to say that life is many other things, as well, – I would – but difficult is certainly one of them. We know this, and yet somehow it still comes as a surprise when that difficulty manifests itself in some particular new way in our own personal experience. Most of us, most of the time, rise to the occasion of these difficulties, and deal with them. We mobilize our resources of support, energy, invention, comfort, and sheer endurance; we solve problems, deal with obstacles, develop skills, learn and grow in ways we might or might not have chosen, and eventually that particular difficulty is replaced by a new one. And in the meanwhile, we also have love and fun and hope and integrity and good times – some rough balance keeps us going, and makes it all worthwhile. At least, most of the time it seems as thought that’s how it’s supposed to work.

And yet, according to the latest issue of Newsweek, statistics suggest that some six million men in the United States will be diagnosed with depression this year – just men. Historically, women have been more likely to seek treatment and be diagnosed, but if only an equal number of six million women are found to be depressed during the coming year, that’s still a debilitating condition directly affecting 12 million Americans, and indirectly but profoundly touching the lives of many millions more family members, employers, friends, and the public life of our nation. When depression strikes, that sense of balance, that the good aspects of life are sufficient, and the difficulties manageable, vanishes. In its place come all the symptoms that Gerald May describes; various physical distresses, personality changes, and inner feelings of exhaustion, emptiness, hopelessness, defeat, and despair. The medical community in our culture has come to understand that depression is a dangerous, and potentially fatal, affliction; left untreated, it can result in suicide, and also leave lasting damage not only on the sufferer, but those closest to him or her as well. In the past several decades, knowledge about the nature and possible treatment of depression has expanded greatly; both chemical and psychological interventions have become increasingly sophisticated.

But not withstanding these advances, two realities remain about depression; one, it has a certain public stigma that can still make people reluctant to seek help for it, and two, it has long been considered to have a spiritual component. Well after medical science has banished the notion that our physical ailments are the result of god’s displeasure or demon-possession, the sense of joylessness and meaninglessness that characterize depression seems to reflect not only the chemistry of our brains, but the strength of our souls. It is a statistical certainty that more than a few of the people in this room right now have been affected by depression; have struggled through that black fog at some point in their lives, or are living in it right now, or else have been baffled by its destructive impact on someone they loved but could not seem to help. It is also true, as Barb and Grace have illustrated for us, that in every generation, highly gifted people have suffered from this condition, and have turned to their art as a tool for survival and transformation. How might we, as humanists at the dawn of the 21^st century, understand depression as a vulnerability of the human condition, and make sense of it when its shadow touches our lives?

I want to suggest that there are three facets to the experience that is named as depression, and that we do both ourselves and those who suffer a disservice unless we recognize the reality and significance of each of these dimensions. First, and fundamentally, it is important to understand what I call for short hand ‘brain soup;’ the neural, chemical processes that are the foundation of our experienced thoughts and feelings. As a materialist, I have no hesitation in acknowledging that human consciousness is a function of our organic existence; moods, personalities, perceptions, decisions all have their origins in the delicate unseen chemistry that happens constantly inside each individual’s skull. Depression is in part a particular malfunction of this organic process, and its pain can be alleviated by manipulating the chemistry of the brain. This growing understanding is a great gift, that should be fully utilized to minimize the suffering brought about by the material accident that constitutes depression.

At the same time, the experience of depression feels like more than just a tangle in the physiology of the brain; it seems to be about meaning, relationship, worthiness, and it would be dismissive to address only the chemical remedies. As Judith Hooper concludes, "Take Prozac AND talk to your shrink." Depression is intertwined with challenges to a person’s psychological integrity and resources; like the experience of loss and grief, it sends one forth on a journey of healing that feels subjectively like a lost wandering, but that is in fact a known path toward new wholeness. Solace and support can be found, if we know how to look for, and offer, them. Finally, I would argue that there is such a state as what is classically termed ‘the dark night of the soul.’ Existential questions, however ultimately unanswerable, are real questions, and sometimes really and painfully urgent. They are not addressed by medication, nor resolved by any amount of emotional healing. Rather, they demand of us the spiritual work by which authentic meaning is made. In the end, this is the hidden gift of depression, if its challenge can be fully undertaken; that it impels us to grapple with our finitude, and make some more genuine peace with the ambiguous terms of our existence.

I want to unpack each of these three dimensions a little more fully, and show how they are often woven together in the experience of depression, and then explore the question of what if anything can be done about them. But first of all I want to affirm that survival in itself is a virtue. Depression, if you will, is a kind of auto-immune disease, which attacks the very defenses of mind and will that ought to protect and heal us. Just as some viruses trick the body’s cellular mechanisms into attacking its own substances as if they were alien invaders, so depression distorts the capacity for thought, self-awareness, judgment, and prediction to deliver a false message of hopelessness, especially about the impact of depression itself. At times it may be an act of Herculean strength just to resist that sense of futility and despair enough to go on living, but be assured, that is the right answer. And each separate moment of persistence, each next step, however painful, is an act of healing that moves closer to the place where depression is no longer in charge. Most of us have moments, and some of us have many of them together, when we are just barely hanging on, and that hanging on itself seems in some way faintly ridiculous; why not have the dignity to let go? But I tell you truly; all the dignity there is, lies in the hanging on; if that is all you can manage, it is enough. Choose to live; choose to survive; choose to keep going; choose to hang on. The idea that there is nothing better to be expected from life is the lie that is depression; to be skeptical of that impulse is one of the human spirit’s great unseen triumphs. If only by faith, cling to it – if only because I said so; better reasons will become apparent in time.

I will note, for the sake of complete argument, that there is a cheerful letting go that comes at the real, organic end of life, which is full of grace and dignity. This authentic and virtuous choice, which leaves loved ones content, can never, by definition, be made in the immediate context of depression. The notion that they are the same thing is a false analogy, another misperception that is a symptom of the disease itself.

Contemporary medical science is just beginning to understand the ways in which the physical matter of the brain operates to create the functions of the mind. The more we learn, the more complex and fascinating it appears, and the more questions we have. It is clear that human beings are open-ended systems – that we cannot operate at our highest capacities, as evolution has designed us to do, in isolation; we need, in the most tangible, organic possible way, one another’s presence in order to be fully formed and whole. And the more we know, the more astounding it seems that the whole thing works as well as it does, as often as it does. Given the billions of cellular interactions taking place at any one moment to regulate both our conscious and our autonomic systems, it can come as no surprise that many opportunities exist for things to go wrong. Depression, in its most basic reality, is one of those things that can go wrong; a failure of the chemistry of satisfaction and connection, a missed message of perceived well-being. Pain, as you know, is a profoundly necessary signal to an organism to pay attention; without the perception of pain, we cannot hope to be successful in avoiding the dangers of the world. Yet it is as important to be able to turn off those signals as it is to trigger them in the first place, and when that process doesn’t work, the mind becomes trapped in a destructive cycle of alarm, discomfort, and unremitting stress. There are many possibilities of how and why this stuckness happens; we know, for example, that something as normal and positive as giving birth can temporarily wreak havoc with a woman’s feelings, perceptions, and emotional state through the chaotic rearrangement of hormones. Other factors may be genetic, environmental, or interpersonal, but what is clear now is that there are ways to chemically unstick the trapped mind. No one who suffers the distress of feeling lifeless, worthless, and hopeless because of the organic effects of depression needs to hesitate over accepting whatever help may be found in the arsenal of pharmacology. It is not a perfect or exact science, but for many people, the right drug can restore function, responsiveness, self-confidence; the will to work through life’s difficulties, and the capacity to enjoy its rewards. As much as we would treat a rash or a fever or the pain of any healing wound, we can seek to treat the pain of depression. There is no occasion whatsoever for shame in this; the only failure is the failure to ask for help when it is needed.

With this understanding as a given, we may then look at the other aspects of depression, and what other responses might also be helpful. Even when the biochemistry is working as expected, life still, as Scott Peck reminds us, has its difficulties. The path of human maturity and wholeness is marked with what Judith Viorst once called necessary losses; those sacrifices that we make in the service of our greater selves and more abundant life, but that must still be mourned. Even if no tragedy touches us – and who among us is untouched by tragedy? – we inevitably must give up the innocent securities of childhood, the idealisms and unlimited potentials of youth, the fantasies of perfect love, the longing for permanence, the moment of our greatest strength or beauty that is gone before we realize it, the achievements that someone else surpasses, thoughtless health, and even in the end, life itself. They may be subtle, or traumatic, these losses, but every human being walks again and again through the valley of the shadow of death; learns again and again the path of grieving. We know, too, that grief has an organic aspect; that our bodies are involved in the process of healing as truly as our hearts and minds. And we know that in grieving, the intense sadness of loss weaves in and out with the feeling of numb nothing, which is the essence of depression. Depression itself is a loss, of unselfconscious ease and confidence in the world, and this compounds whatever other grief might be on the plate. While drugs may be able to take off the worst painful edge of mourning, you cannot medicate away the need to do the basic internal work of healing. As with a broken bone, or surgery, or other physical traumas, this necessarily takes time, and works best if accompanied by care and support. Therapy, broadly understood, speeds the process, whether that takes the form of professional counseling, or the loving attention of friends, or expressive exercises like journaling, painting, quilting, cooking, or gardening. All of these efforts help to discharge emotional toxins, and restore us to balance and health. It is very common for those who grieve deeply to experience times of depression, and those who are depressed almost always have some work of grieving to do.

No discussion of depression ought to ignore the ancient notion that there are ‘dark nights of the soul,’ when life appears pointless, futile, and unrewarding. Traditional theologies interpret these experiences as a loss or questioning of faith in god, but I tend to think that they are equal opportunity challenges, and that not believing in god in the first place doesn’t mean you won’t have a dark night of the soul. The same sort of impatient suspicion of the real significance of human potential or kinship, or the importance of justice, or the search for truth, can afflict those of us for whom these are the ultimate values that matter. As Gerald May points out, this is not the same thing as clinical depression, and yet the two often go hand in hand. Certainly, depression makes its victims question all their assurances and hopes, and casts a pall of doubt over whatever has been the trusted source of meaning for them. Again, there is nothing wrong with taking what help medicine can give, but that comfort alone will never address the feeling of existential abandonment and dread that characterizes the spiritual experience of a dark night of the soul. Mystics in every religious tradition have taught that such moments are to be expected; indeed, that they are necessary for anyone who seeks a faith that is more than superficial, or the product of convention. The counsel of the wise has always been that this sense of anomy and despair is to be confronted with a persistent habit of reflection, spiritual practice, and service. We may feel that our own lives are dust and ashes to ourselves, but that need not stop us from making them useful to the needs of others. Whatever forms of truth or beauty we have been accustomed to contemplate with delight, we can turn to now, however pointless they may appear in our own defeated imagination. The disciplines of study, concentration, movement, work, or self-care that we practiced when life had purpose and joy can still be followed, whether or not so doing seems likely to achieve anything worthwhile. The dark night experience, if we will stay with it, breaks through eventually into a more authentic, creative, and compassionate humanity; it summons us to discover, yet again, that we are not in control, even of the unfolding of our own lives, yet we have many opportunities to choose and change and grow in that process, to discover unsuspected depth and meaning along the way. Depression lifts when the chemical transactions shift in the brain; dawn comes to the dark night of the soul when the human spirit rediscovers its capacity to transmute suffering into beauty.

That creativity, I tend to think, may be the best answer we finally have to the agonies of depression. For centuries before there was Prozac, writers and painters and musicians fought their darkest hopelessness and sustained themselves through art, making their very pain serve the creative impulse. In most cases, that in itself didn’t make them happy; quite possibly, nothing would. Yet they fought for their lives, to go on anyway, to make beauty, and to survive. To create is to defy all the lies that depression tells; it is to affirm that there is a future of hope, that what we do matters, that we can bring good into the world. And it is not only for great artists to know this solace; ordinary people keep journals, grow tomatoes, build furniture, paint landscapes, write songs, raise canaries – anything to strengthen the spirit to endure for one more day.

Our quick-fix culture coupled with our scientific curiosity has found some of the chemical keys to some of the brain’s malfunctions, and what a marvelous gift of mercy that is! This knowledge is being constantly refined, so that it is ever easier to relieve the mind’s debilitating pain, which is surely a worthy goal. But I think we shall always have need of that alchemy of creativity, by which the unavoidable suffering of the human condition may be transformed into something of beauty, whether fleeting or enduring. For life is difficult – improbable, wonderful, precious, yes, but also inescapably difficult – and to be fully alive is, and will always be, to know grief and dread as well as joy. It is when we embrace this truth of our human condition that grief begins to heal, and dread to fall away; for as Kenneth Patton writes, "we make of the mysteries a song and a story; we learn the ways of acceptance and peace." When we can answer our inmost pain with creation rather than despair, we have arrived at the unconquerable secret; it offers us not comfort, but the virtue of survival. When that is all you have left, it is the one thing you most profoundly need.