In The Long Run

The sun gives ground to a long cold night,
And you screw up your courage for another fight,
But you know in your heart it’ll be all right in the long run.
--Redgum, Long Run

I’ve blogged before about the power that music has to transport us out of ourselves, if only for a few moments. For me there are many bands, artists, and types of music that can do that. One of them is definitely Redgum, an Australian folk-rock band of the late 70s and early 80s. They are unknown overseas, and in Australia they are remembered mainly as a one-hit wonder for the song I was only 19, addressing the experience of Vietnam war vets. But they had a lot of other great songs that have been sadly forgotten, one of them being the song Long Run.

Some have seen this song as a criticism of the stereotypical Australian “She’ll be right mate, don’t worry about it” attitude. But I interpret it differently. Gradually as time passes I am coming to believe that things will be all right in the long run. But not because of destiny or any natural fairness in the world. They will be all right in the long run if we make them be all right.

Looking back over the last few centuries at all the improvements that have been made in Australia and other countries, progress has come from struggle. People struggled for the right to vote, for the right to have decent working conditions, for the right to equal treatment under the law regardless of sex, race, creed or sexual preference. None of these battles are ever entirely won. But where progress has been made, it is not because of any immutable law of progress or divine gift. It has been made because many people paid with, to quote old Winston Churchill: blood, toil, tears and sweat.

I think the same principles apply in our personal life. For those of us who struggle with depression or another mental illness life is a challenge. Some people find consolation in religions of various types, a belief in destiny or a cosmic plan, or in self-help books like “The Secret” that say we just have to think positive and everything will work out magically. I don’t find any of these to be convincing. I’ve been an atheist for a long time, and I have never found that many results come from prayers or wishful thinking. In my experience, results come from work.

I think that everyone wants their life to be better, and that we all do the best we can at any given time. There is still a long road ahead of me to where I want to be as a person. But I am making steps down that road. I’ve taken many hits along the way, but I am strong enough to have withstood them, and I am gradually learning to accept myself and be satisfied with the progress I am making. And for the first time in my life, I am slowly beginning to believe that things will indeed be all right in the long run.

If I Ever Leave This World Alive

Recently I heard the song "If I ever leave this world alive" by the punk-folk group Flogging Molly. I hadn't listened to it for a while, and it took me back to 2005, when I first heard it. I remember originally hearing it on an episode of The Shield, and being entranced by it. I remember going on a two day road trip with a couple of friends before leaving Australia, pestering one of them to download it for me so I could play it later on the iPod as we drove along the coast. And I remember annoyingly singing bits and pieces of the song throughout the long car trip. But mostly, I remember the friends.

Originally four of us were to go on the road trip; myself, an engineer and a musician (two old friends from high school), and a friend from Korea. Unfortunately the Korean friend wound up having to work on that weekend, so he only spent Friday night with us before we headed off on Saturday morning. But it was a good Friday night. The musician turned up on Saturday morning (having brought only the clothes on his back plus a pair of sunglasses), my Korean friend headed back to work, and the three of us headed out along the coast.

The engineer, had just come back from 18 months or so living in the UK, and was just settling back into Australian life. I was about to up stakes and fly off to Japan to an unknown future. The musician was already starting to get itchy feet and thinking about heading over to South America, which he later did. Australia is very far from the rest of the world and culturally confused, with a physical geography that places us near Asia, but a mental geography that places us somewhere between the US and the UK. This combination of distance and confusion, plus all the usual reasons people travel, has sent generations of young Australians have heading off overseas for a week, a year, or a lifetime.

Not too long after that trip I headed off to Japan. My Korean friend was called back home by his company, and while he often came to Japan on business, schedules rarely aligned. We caught up a couple of times, and climbed Mt Fuji together back in 2008. I had promised to visit him in Korea at some stage, but still haven't done so.

A few weeks ago he told me that he'd be in Tokyo this past Thursday, and we had a chance to catch up. It had been a while and we didn't have a lot of time, but it was great to see him again. We reminisced about the old days in Australia, brought each other up to date with recent events, and talked about what was going on in our lives, good and bad. It was nice. It made me think back over many things I'd forgotten, or not thought about for a long time.

At various times over my three trips around the merry-go-round of depression I've called on these friends, and each of them has helped me at different times, to the best of their abilities to do so. With them, and with others as well, I have sometimes been angry and frustrated that they did not or could not do more to help me. I thought angrily to myself on many occasions that people should see how much I need help, should be there for me more, should check in more often. Couldn't they see how much pain I was in?

For the most part, I have moved past those feelings now. I think that we are all as good as we are capable of being at any given point in time. I said the same thing in last week's blog post, but I think it is worth repeating. Dealing with someone who has depression or another mental illness is tough, and it requires an amount of energy and skill that most people simply don't have.
This is far from ideal. But this is the way the world is. And denying reality doesn't help anyone.

I am far from where I would like to be in terms of my situation in life. But I think I am learning and getting stronger. And harsh as it may seem, we ultimately be able to stand or fall from our own efforts. Others can help, and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to many people who have helped me get through particularly rough patches. But at the end of the day we must stand on our own two feet. And I think I'm getting closer to being able to do that.

Letting go, and getting better

“Every man must look after his own soul; you can’t lay it down at another man’s door like a foundling, and expect him to take care of it."
--Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

I'm feeling better these days. I'm not jumping for joy or skipping down the street, but I am feeling gradually better. Life is manageable. It has plenty of challenges and ordeals to endure, and there are countless things I could probably complain at length about. But life is too short, and we only get one shot at it. And more than that, I really don't feel the need to complain as much as I used to.

I have spent a lot of my life, especially the last few years, being angry or depressed. Some say that depression is rage turned inwards, and I think that makes sense. I have raged against the world, against myself, against others. I have spent so much time finding reasons to look down on everyone around me, as well as myself. And then I've been angry that, surprisingly enough, people don't seem to want to spend much time around me meeting my emotional needs.

I am still a work in progress. But I think at the root of a lot of my frustration has been the fact that I've wanted to find other people to fill some gap, something missing inside myself. Humans are social creatures, and we crave human contact. And where the line between healthy need and unhealthy need is, I am not sure. But I have definitely spent a lot of time on the unhealthy side of the line. And what I needed, other people were not capable of giving. In hindsight, I think they recognized that, and moved away accordingly.

But I think there has been some shift within me. It has probably been caused by a number of different things. Part of it is probably diet and exercise, and forcing myself to get involved in more social activities. Part of it is writing this blog, and reading about the struggles of others who have been through similar things, especially Takashi. Mental illness is not something that one can openly talk about with a lot of people, and finding something of an online community of people who know what it is like helps.

And I am gradually moving closer to being okay with myself. I am caring a lot less about other people's opinions. I think I'm done walking on eggshells.

I am gradually feeling more confident in life, more accepting of my flaws and limitations. And I am able to see the flaws in others now, not as a reason to condemn them or look down on them, but just as part of their humanity. I think we are all as good as we are capable of being at any given time, getting by as best we can.

Pale Blue Dot

Usually this blog is my thoughts, but for this post, I’d like to share something from a book I read at university that made a huge impact on me, Pale Blue Dot. It was written by astronomer, skeptic and science popularizer Carl Sagan, who also wrote the novel Contact and made the TV series Cosmos. In this passage, he is talking about the picture of earth to the left, taken by the Voyager spacecraft in 1990, now 20 years ago. The picture was taken from 6.1 billion kilometers away, and the Earth appears as a barely visible tiny dot.

“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

I'm on my way from misery to happiness today..

Well, maybe. Quoting The Proclaimers goofy 80s hit may be a bit premature, but I am gradually feeling a bit better as time goes by. Life is not exactly a barrel of laughs, but I feel some progress.

There are probably a few reasons for this. I think this blog has been helpful in giving me an outlet for my own feelings and opinions, and also it is a way to meet other bloggers who are going through similar experiences. It feels good to have some sense of community, even one as ephemeral as the online world. It is good to know that I am not the only one going through anxiety and depression, and having the chance to be there for some others is also rewarding.

Over the past six months I have also been eating more healthily and exercising more as well. There is no such thing as a cure-all for depression, and it is something that will probably be with me in some form forever, but taking care of what I eat, and getting out there and putting my body through it's paces is good for me. Even today we tend to have some form of Cartesian dualism, where we think the mind and body are separate things. This is not true, but it is a very sticky meme. Mind and body are two parts of one whole, and neglecting the body cannot help but have a bad impact on the mind.

I've also made some first steps towards accepting myself as I am. I tend to be full of self-loathing, always wanting to be better or different than I am. But I am what I am, and I need to just deal with that. I'm doing the best that I can, and beating myself up over being inadequate doesn't help anyone, least of all myself.

As well as that, I've come to realize that I am not quite as inadequate as I thought I was. I've been making some progress in life, slowly but surely. Previously I wrote about the isolation I felt when I went to see fireworks a few months ago, feeling so alone, isolated, removed from the people I was with. I received quite a few insightful replies to that post, but the one that really made me think was from Nick. He talked about how there is room for all kinds of people in the world, and no point in trying to be something we are not. I'll never be a gregarious extrovert, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is just the way I am.

Last night I went to a combined halloween/birthday party. I was coming from work, so decided to simply compliment my suit with horns and a pitchfork, and come as a "corporate demon", which people seemed to think was pretty funny. I talked to a few people some of whom I knew, others who were strangers. I talked to a variety of people, Japanese, Chinese, miscellaneous Westerners, in English and my broken Japanese. I wasn't the life of the party, and I did feel uncomfortable at times. I don't think I'll ever be really comfortable in crowded social settings. But it was much better than that night under the fireworks.

Life is a struggle, but I seem to be making progress, slowly but steadily. And like those Scottish lads sang, I'll do my best, to do the best I can!

If You Don’t Fight You Lose

The title of this post is taken from an old union slogan. It was written about people banding together to fight for their rights as workers. But it works just as well as a truism for dealing with life in general. Life is a struggle, and we all have to keep fighting. In this post, I’d like to talk about a couple of fighters I’ve been following.

For a while now I have been reading the blog of Chronic Impending Disaster, an American guy who writes about his life, the music and books that he loves, and his experiences as a trainee Spanish teacher. Unfortunately, he has been struggling a bit, and is thinking seriously about pulling out of teacher training, and doing something a bit less stressful, where he doesn’t need to be the center of attention all the time. He is trying to see through this final week so he can get a partial credit. And he is doing this while dealing with depression. I’ve been through similar difficulties with dealing with work and depression, and I know how tough it is.

More recently, I started following the blog of Takashi Nakayama, a Japanese guy who is currently on extended leave from his job, trying to deal with depression. He has been living on a reduced salary for some time, and in addition to having to deal with the hell that is depression, he is now having to worry about financial stresses as well, especially the Japanese city taxes.

While it has not been easy, he has managed to get advice about what to do, force himself out of his place to deal with the unhelpful local city office, and is in the process of getting his financial affairs in order. Most of us struggle with budgeting and government bureaucracies at the best of times, and doing these things while dealing with crippling depression, without much support, is very tough.

Both CID and Takashi are fighting hard. They are not giving up. They are fighting each day with everything at their disposal to keep going, keep facing down their depression, keep dealing with all the problems that come up.

Depression is a terrible and isolating thing. But the internet can provide a way for those of us who lack enough community in our regular lives to find people we have things in common with. It is not a perfect solution, but life is not about perfect solutions. It's about doing the best we can with what we have. CID and Takashi are both doing that, and I am really looking forward to seeing them get past the issues they are facing right now.

Tokyo Marathon, Take 2

“Never tell me the odds!”
--Han Solo, The Empire Strikes Back

The Tokyo Marathon is an incredibly popular event. This year, 294,469 people applied to run the full marathon. 32,000 were accepted. And I was one of them!

This will be my second time to enter the marathon. The first time was in 2007, at the first Tokyo marathon. I had signed up for it in the summer of 2006, when I was doing relatively well, and running relatively often. But as the winter of 2006 came, I gradually fell into the first of my three major bouts of depression. Among other things, this pretty much stopped any exercising.

By the time the marathon came around in March 2007, I was very out of shape, and still very depressed. But I couldn’t bear to give up. So I went ahead and ran the race anyway. The first ten kilometers were okay. The next ten were increasingly difficult and painful. And the last twenty were hell. Actually, I walked the second half of the race, and took six and a half hours to finish. Even walking was incredibly painful. But I ran the last few hundred meters to the finish line. I was in agony for weeks afterwards, but I finished it.

I had no interest in ever doing a marathon again. But this year I started running again, and gradually I have been getting fitter. I am still out of shape, but I am gradually getting better. This week I ran 15 kilometers for the first time since that day back in March 2007. Slowly but surely, my body is getting in shape. It is not all improvement – yesterday I went for a run and felt I had to stop after 4 kilometers. I still have a lot to learn about fitness, about my body and how to treat it well. But I’m getting there.

I have no intentions of repeating the self-imposed death march that was the 2007 marathon. I am running two or three times a week, and gradually extending my distances. I am trying to eat well and will also be doing a number of shorter races in the next few months to build up my stamina.

I completed the 2007 marathon, but I still feel I was defeated by it. In 2010 I want to make a success of the race. It will be hard, it will be painful. But I want to be able to run it at my pace, and run the whole way, not have to drag myself across the finish line. I’d like to finish it in 5 hours. And I’d like to finish it with a smile on my face!