blog > hope

When you‘ve lost hope

As my life came crashing down I found myself in a deep depression. No longer able to work, marriage headed to divorce, no longer able to do basics like going out to buy myself food, I lost everything. And after a decade of doctors telling me “everything is normal” (it wasn’t), there seemed to be nothing to save me.

Ever practical, I reasoned that if I’m to ever solve whatever was wrong with me and attempt to dig myself out of the whole, I had to first beat the depression. I had to find hope.

So I did what any competent engineer would do and started analyzing the problem. I knew exactly why I was depressed – that was no mystery. So I started looking at what exactly is happening when I’m the depths of my depression. The answer was in the center of those awful episodes.

I noticed that in those moments/minutes/hours what I saw in my mind’s eye was dark corridor going on forever. No doors or windows or an end. Just darkness stretching forward forever.

I reasoned that if I’m to “defeat” this, I had to think of the exact opposite (it’s not so simple; read to the end). To me the exact opposite was a green field. Sun, trees, grass. Freedom.

That part was easy. The difficult part was allowing myself to try and substitute the darkness with the light. I was in a bad place for a reason. For a very valid reason. I couldn’t just think nice thoughts and pretend everything is ok. That’s called denial and it’s the road to madness. So, I had to do some mental gymnastics.

As I thought through the problem I came up with two powerful truths:

1. I don’t know the future
2. I consider myself a fair person

With these in hand I had what I needed. It goes like this:

Since I don’t know thew future, I can’t say for a fact that it will be dark and endless. And since I’m a fair person I have to be fair to myself. And if I’m going to be fair to myself, I better consider the happy grassy field along with the dark endless corridor.

I came up with an exercise:

Whenever I have those dark thoughts about the future I will be fair to myself and follow them with the light happy idea for the future. At first it seemed like an exercise in futility. To begin with, in those terrible dark moments it was hard to even remember the exercise. But I persevered and eventually I started doing it.

In the early days it was weird. Thinking those happy thoughts felt like I’m just doing something for the sake of doing it. But I kept reminding myself that I don’t know the future and I’m a fair person so I owe it to myself to consider a happy future. So I continued. dark thoughts -> follow them with good thoughts.

As time went on, a very interesting thing started happening: the time I spent on the dark thoughts started becoming shorter and the time I spent on happier thoughts started becoming longer.

And then the seemingly impossible happened. The instant I felt the dark thoughts coming I simply waved them away. I knew that I’d follow them with good thoughts and that would render them useless. So if they’re useless why should I pay them any attention. Sorry dark thoughts, I’m looking to the light. That’s where I’m headed. I don’t know how I’ll get there but that’s my destination.

Hope. Out of thin air.