PLAGUE = DEPRESSION

Ever since they shut all the libraries and all the churches, I’ve been experiencing depression.

The libraries were my sanctuary, and church was my community.

The depression has gotten worse and worse since that time, somewhere in March 2020.

Now I’m finding it difficult to do anything, so I find myself sitting in the park with the birds and the flowers for hours…

I’ve reread Victor Frankel’s ‘man’s search for meaning’ twice…just to get a different perspective of this endless apathy and heaviness.

I cope better with anxiety than I do with depression. Somehow I can manage anxiety better….but with depression I lack the resources to deal with it. Cope with it.

In terms of the plague, Australia is doing really well in stopping the spread, but that information doesn’t help me while I’m depressed.

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.

Frankel’s ‘will to meaning’ is both the problem and the solution. I see no meaning in my suffering with heavy depression, but need to find meaning in my suffering.

He says, this is imperative!

Sometimes that can be, just to get through the day, hour or minute. It also means to do it with dignity and respect for myself and others. The ‘higher’ meaning includes God and a surrender to ‘what is’, and accept fully my situation.

The plague is constantly in the news, which doesn’t help. The Spanish flu in 1918 did not get reported like things are done today, so I’m sure people would have been less anxious and more accepting, as they didn’t have all the mass media bombarding them. One is overwhelmed by news in 2020.