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Gloomy Nights

Here in the Northern hemisphere the nights are pulling in making our days shorter.  Next week in Britain this will be suddenly accelerated when the clocks go back an hour and our afternoons will be shorter.  For many people this will trigger depression.  Just as hedgehogs and similar animals will be told by their body clocks that it is time to hibernate, I believe our bodies get a similar urge to slow down.  If we realize this we can pace ourselves differently and learn not to fight the urge but to work with it.

  I want to say a few things to those who are depressed.  I have been there and it is not a nice place from a comfort point of view, although it can be a time when we learn important things about life and ourselves.  The Bible says that it is better to be in the house of mourning than in the house of laughter.  At a funeral you are brought face to face with the inevitableness of death at some point unknown.  This is sobering and should make you think of your eternal destiny.  Will it be heaven or hell? For the place of laughter let's think of a Friday night when you like to go out and have a "good time." You drink, you dance, you play around with sex and what is the result?  A hangover a meaningless sex act and if you are lucky, self disgust.  You see the house of laughter doesn't do you much good at all.

  So maybe depression is actually doing you much more good than having a "good time." It is important to think seriously about life.

Depression can come on as a reaction to what is happening in your life, but sometimes it is more to do with and an imbalance of chemicals in your brain.  One thing is sure, if it has taken hold there is no way you can "pull yourself together." There comes a point later on where you do have to make that effort to recover but at the nadir you cannot do this, as the part of you that you would use to pull yourself together is the very part that is ill or broken.  No one tells someone with a broken leg to go out for a five mile run and they will feel better, no, rest is required.  Perhaps I will write more later.

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