Did We Really Choose it Right Saying We're Okay This Way?

What does a teacher see when writing grades into their gradebook? Perhaps they see intellect. Perhaps they see effort. They might even see a student's interest or the lack thereof in their particular field. A student's "good" and "bad" days might be apparent in the numbers. The distribution of their students' intelligences related to the subject as well as trends and patterns can be found in the string of numbers called grades.

Much information can be milked from strings of numbers. However, numbers can only tell so much. Guess the students' emotional states, life circumstances, and what's on their hearts. Good luck doing that. You might assume that the students with okay grades are doing okay, but that's not always true! Likewise, the kid you envy for achieving milestones every minute could be the one hating themselves at the end of the day for not doing more. Your colleague/classmate who always seems to get awards could be the one thinking in the back of their mind "It's all meaningless".

Depression does not discriminate. It doesn't care about your age, gender, temperament, occupation, race, previous disability status, or anything else. Look around you for the clinically depressed people. Chances are, unless you're a very skilled psychologist, you can't spot them at a glance. You didn't think it would be the choleric-sanguine overachiever or the easygoing, almost universally-loved sanguine-phlegmatic. The analytical melancholic-phlegmatic never quite content with themselves seemed more likely. Maybe you were almost certain it was the brooding melancholic-choleric. Depression is not exclusive to predominantly melancholic temperaments.

It's nonfiction. Find the one who dyed their red heart to black. It might even be you. It doesn't do you any good to mask it with achievements; you will only fail wanting more and more until you get sucked into a black hole of stress. No one is too talented, too privileged, or too bubbly to suffer from depression. There is no temperament, MBTI type, IQ, or enneagram type immune to depression. No GPA financial standing, sports team position, chair in a musical ensemble, or social status is viable armor against such a thing. Talent or the lack thereof is not an indicator of depression either.

I watched a video about a pianist with no hands. Some people would call him inspirational. I call him an excellent and dedicated musician. Music tends to attract self-critical people, so I wonder if, behind his very well-coordinated limbs, lies a mind telling him that he will never be good enough, that he is just a gimmick made to please the small-minded masses. Part of me wonders if he worries that children like him are pressured by their parents to hone their talents in the hopes of emulating him. Does he ever want to quit out of fear of never meeting his standards?

What about the anxiety-ridden student who drops out of an opportunity for an academic honor saying "It's not for me"? Why is this student dismissed as weak and a quitter while the pianist is almost venerated? That student probably worked up as much courage to say "It's not for me" as, if not more than, the pianist gathered to perform. The brain is a physical member of the body that undergoes physical processes to keep the rest of our body functioning. Why is it that sensible, reasonable people who would never make fun of cancer would not hesitate to poke fun at a mental illness?

Again, did we really choose it right saying we're okay this way? Depression affects overachievers, average achievers, and underachievers alike. It affects a variety of people regardless of where they come from. Even without a mental illness, everyone is fighting a hard battle. It is not anyone's right to invalidate another person's experiences and hardships just because they think their or another person's problems are worse.

Song: Lost One's Weeping (slower piano version)
Artist: Neru (Dub by JubyPhonic)
Language: English dubbed from Japanese
Instrumental: Wing (Link is here)