Hearing another friend say, “I’m depressed,” I wonder if we’ve gone too far with the whole psychology thing. I mean, on the one hand we have the strict Indian parents who call it “unnecessary drama.” always bringing up videos and articles about depression and how its symptoms are ignored until it’s too late, reading stories on Wattpad about the depressed and lonely girl getting the attention of the most popular guy in school and all that… Have we glorified ourselves in any way? depression?
As teenagers, we all have mood swings. A sweet text from a random stranger can feel like the top of Mount Everest, while mom asking us to clean our room can make us feel like we’re forced to jump off Mount Everest. Nothing new in it. This has happened with every teen over the years, although the battlefield may be different with each generation. We want our parents to be good listeners and then feel like they are invading our personal space if they ask how our day was. For some of us, our peers seem to be the only ones who ‘get’ us, while for others peers are the thorns to be avoided on a day-to-day basis. We want love, but we don’t understand what love really is. We want freedom but we don’t know what we really need to be free from. But as we get older, we often realize that while none of the people around us were perfect, they loved us and meant well for us. That’s how it has been up to now.
But suddenly, out of nowhere, Google threw phrases like “depression, neurosis, insomnia, anxiety disorder, panic attacks, etc.” at us. And we were like, “Oh my gosh, that’s a new thing.” Soon we had academic articles on depression and anxiety jumping off our mobile screens. Every story would have a depressed person, usually a girl who slits her wrists and a guy who finds that beautiful somehow and selflessly, altruistically pulls her out of that dark hole. And we loved it. We loved the fact that we had someone to blame for our mistakes.
Of course, I do not want to say that depression is not real. It’s very, very real and because of the increasing pressure on kids these days, it’s becoming more mainstream, which probably explains why it’s started to garner so much attention. But when fifteen-year-olds start to behave as if the world ends when their phones are confiscated, or when seventeen-year-olds drink to “drown their problems”, that is, dad asks them what they are going to do in life if they don’t study, or when children commit suicide for not being able to watch some TV series (one such incident occurred in India in 2013)… you know something is wrong.
These days we have more books and articles and TV shows and seminars on how to be a good parent and not much talk about being a good child. Somehow, we’ve understood this as our license to live the way we want, act irresponsibly, let all our God-given abilities go to hell, and still expect our elders to smile and remain silent. We want our parents to be perfect; we want people to accept us even if we act like spoiled, cranky, cranky little monkeys. We have learned that it is always their fault that we are miserable, that it is because of the way they treat us that we are ‘down’.
And I know what I’m talking about. At the risk of sounding like an old hermit, let me just say that I’ve been through this. I never smiled at people or made an effort to talk to them and expected them to love me and come close to me. I thought my parents were torturing me just because they expected me to study. Just study, nothing more. No one forced me to do something I’m not capable of. Nobody left me isolated of their own free will. What people said or did to me was just a reaction. The reason I was miserable was because I wasn’t doing anything about the calling God had given me. (And believe me, everyone has a calling.) But I tried to make everyone around me miserable because in my mind I was the damsel in distress while everyone else was an ogre.
And now, I see the same thing in most of the teenagers I know. We don’t want to live responsibly, act compassionately, or speak encouragingly. But we want all of that from others. We don’t see how everything is just a reaction to our actions. So when we don’t get what we want, what do we do? Throwing the teenage version of a tantrum – going into ‘depression’
Don’t be fooled, my friends. Don’t be fooled into thinking depression is “great” or “beautiful” or whatever. Don’t think that saying “Nobody likes me” is the new fashion. Depression is a demon inside your head all the time. And most of us can’t even begin to understand what that feels like. Don’t use depression as a sword against people who love you just because they don’t always act the way you want them to.
So instead of trying to make everyone around us perfect, why not focus on being better people, better students, better kids, better friends, and better humans? It’s okay to make mistakes. This is how we grow. We hurt people. That is being human. But never pass the responsibility for your mistake onto someone else. Ask God and men for forgiveness and move on. Try again. Do the best you can do, be the best you can be. Find your calling and dedicate your life to it. Then you will find peace and grace flowing into your life and joy flooding your heart.