Writing Challenge of the Day: Post Something Hilarious About Depression!

You know, I'm a depressive person, so you'd think I'd understand that the worst possible thing for me to do is to set a goal I'm guaranteed to fail at.

But here I am doing it anyway: attempting to make depression a source of amusement.

Is there anything less funny than depression?

Well, of course there is. But if I start listing all the less-funny-than-depression things I can think of, this writing challenge may end up seeming less impossible, but writing it will probably depress me, because if there's anything more depressing than depression, it would be deliberately thinking about all the things that are more depressing than depression.

We had a brief flurry of depression consciousness recently (I won't mention why ... very not-funny), but already it's receding into the background, as far as I can tell. And do you know why?

I don't. Honestly, I have no idea why some things catch the public attention and stick with us, while others provoke a giant but short-lived response and then disappear.

But I've got a couple of theories, and maybe one of them will have something funny in it.

First off, I'd bet that most of us with depression haven't leapt up during the recent coverage and said, "I'm depressed too! Wow, it sure is great that let you all know how terrible I feel about everything!" So it's pretty likely that people just aren't aware of how many of us there are moping around out here.

Secondly ... duhhh, it's depressing!

Those of us with depression tend to dwell on the things that depress us, but healthy people are much less likely to do that. If there's something that can't easily be fixed, most people just move along. As a result, the world is full of difficult-to-fix problems that aren't getting solved. So there's tons of fodder for us depressive types to focus on and get more depressed about, but non-depressive people are able to shrug and get on with their lives.

The upshot of this is that it's probably self-defeating to try to make depression a cause celebre (very depressing that I don't know how to make Blogger put the right accent mark in that word). The people most affected are too depressed to do anything about it, and the people who aren't directly affected would rather not think too much about it, because it's a downer.

So how can we fix depression?

First, by not worrying about it. Seriously, worrying is what causes depression in the first place, so let's not get another depression ball rolling.

Second, by accomplishing things. Depression is, in many cases, a state of learned helplessness in which the sufferer feels unable to improve any situation or circumstances. Even small accomplishments provide contradictory evidence to the sense that we are helpless, so depressive people need to remind themselves to do things. (Like writing blog entries.)

Third, by understanding that failure is okay. If you're not willing to fail at something, you're unlikely to try it in the first place. And if you don't try, you can never succeed. I'm pretty sure this post is not actually hilarious. At most, I bet it's only sporadically wry, whereas the title suggested that it might be thigh-slappingly funny. So my efforts here almost certainly rank somewhere between partial and abysmal failure. And the fact that I'm okay with failing abysmally is great. It's like a giant weight lifted off of me. I tried something, knowing that I was likely to fail, and now that I have, my prediction has been validated, and that makes me feel a sense of accomplishment.

Is depression funny? No. Was this post at least a little amusing? I think so. Do I feel better for having written it? Yes.

And that's enough for now.