Routes to Depression

Expectations are an unfortunate part of life. I am content with who I am, what I think, and how I am. I do not desire to be anyone else, yet I am still burdened by the expectations to be like others. The expectation to be successful, the expectation to have a girlfriend or a wife, the expectation of being mentally and personally and physically healthy. It is a weird tug of war between expectations and lack of desire to change. Depression lives in the gap between reality and expectations. There are two aspects to this, reality and expectations. I’ll start with expectation, as I think it is easier to tackle.

Two problems arise, are the expectations we have for ourselves our own or societies, and are they attainable. Striving for the goals of society will often leave us empty if they can even be reached. This can also manifest in why we are striving for a goal. There is nothing wrong with the goal of meeting someone and getting married. But if you strive for this because society says you must not live alone, or because of pressure from family, you will never be happy in your relationship. Secondly, can we even achieve these expectations at all. If my expectation for myself is too lofty and extreme, I will fall short. When we examine the reality of our life and find that we have fallen short of our personal goals or the goals of society, we will not be happy. If we examine our reality and find that the expectations we have met are not satisfying, we will be unhappy.

Now let's look at reality. The problem with reality is that we often do not perceive it for what it is. If I say I am unattractive, when there are plenty of women who would love to date me, there is a disconnect between reality and perception. When we misperceive reality, it grows the divide between expectations. I believe part of the problem lies in our innate inability to properly perceive reality. I could never understand what it is like to be a bat. If I could ask a bat what its life was like, it would describe the world through its own eyes, in its own words. My point is to say that reality is subjective. Not only is it subjective, but it is incredibly difficult to sense the entirety of reality. Perhaps including other perspectives might help in the pursuit of truth.

If we wish to be truly happy in life, we need proper, grounded, personal, and achievable expectations for ourselves. Second, we need to see reality for what it is. This is not easy, and I am still trying to figure out how to do this. But when we can take control of these two things, we can minimize the gap between them and in doing so, push depression and unfulfillment out the door. In pursuit of controlling these two variables, I believe we encounter the problem of fantasy.

What is the difference between desire and idealism? I live in a world of fantasy, where the idea is often better than the reality. If the idealization of something, say a romantic relationship, is based off of a desire, then what is to stop me from acting upon the fantasy and making the relationship a real thing. But if the fantasy is not based on desire, then it is merely a source of pain longing for what I don’t want. The question then becomes, what is the difference between desire and idealism. Do I desire, and therefore fantasize, or do I idealize, and therefore fantasize. This is an important issue because a fantasy, regardless of the subject, puts the thinker in a state of detachment from reality. The deeper the thinker goes into fantasy, the further they go from reality. And eventually, the thinker will become lost in depression as the expectations of their fantasy fall drastically short of the reality around them. If the fantasy is based off of a true desire, then the fantasy can be realized. If it is based on idealism, then it is unattainable and should be cut off. This again begs the question of how to tell the difference. Desire is something we truly want, idealism is what we think we want or are told to want. Both lead to fantasy, but only one is true.