Living in the Darkness: Home

Recently someone asked me, "Why do you listen to depressing music? If you're depressed you should listen to happy music to bring you out of the depression." Boy I wish it were that easy.

Have you ever laid in the darkness with your eyes shut for hours? Then did someone turn the light on? Did it shock your eyes, make them some what painful? Why? Because your eyes were use to the darkness. The same goes for depression. You would be surprised what we can allow ourselves to get used to. For some of us, it's not about depression specifically. It's about the fact that the majority of our lives we've been left alone in the darkness, dark things have happened to us, and dark thoughts have controlled our minds. In a sense, darkness is our home.

Shedding Some Light on the Subject

Home is a place of comfort. The one and only place we can let our guards down and feel completely free. Now imagine your mind is a home. Do you live in the light? (Positive thoughts, happy memories, usually perky?) The light is your home. It's where you feel most comfortable. However, if you're the opposite, then you feel most comfortable in the darkness. It's your home. If you try to turn the light on it totally blinds you. Unfortunately, we can't choose what stimulates our mind and what doesn't. "Home is where the heart is." Maybe it's also "Home is where the mind is."

In fact, we are so comfortable in our own minds that we find it absolutely impossible to see anyone else's point of view, unless we really step out of our comfort zones. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of it. The light lifers look at a dark photograph captured by an artist and think, "Oh wow, that is really dark" or "that's really depressing." The opposite is true as well. If a dark lifer looks at a light photograph they make think "this is too cheery" or "yuck not everyone is happy like that." The light is being shocked by the darkness and the dark is being shocked by the light.

Blinded by Sudden Light

Everyone has been through a section of their lives that no one else has witnessed. Some people have had very positive lives while others very negative. So how does someone born to a loving family tell someone who has been abused and in foster care to not be depressed? Easy, we hold back judgement. We don't say that in the first place. We say "Oh I see that you're at home in your mind right now, maybe I'll sit with you a while so I can better understand." That is when we truly close the gaps between us. Realizing that everyone's story is different and every thing that happens to a person in their life is what shapes who they are, what they like, what they feel comfortable with, their views, their opinions, and even their taste in music. There exists vast differences in arts and music because we are not all of the same experiences and life. That's okay.

Start Celebrating Our Differences

What a boring world this would be if we were all exactly the same. Celebrate the differences and allow people to express themselves freely.