the purpose pandemic
your reason to exist.
You do not have a reason to exist.
There is no inane bigger mystery behind your existence. Society uses the purpose card whenever it wants to sell you something. In my opinion, that is not a dick move if it forces you to think about yours.
If you've ever been depressed, I'm sure people would have often come to you to say:
"Your presence is important in this world."
"You're here for something."
"Your presence matters."
or something similar.
What's excruciating, at least for the ones who've been on the receiving end of this, is not knowing the why behind it.
If my presence is so important, why is it so? If I matter, why do I? Am I here to rid the world of AIDS? Or am I just a lonely dude cussing at people on the streets from my balcony? Is that why I exist?
the why of work
If you've ever been at a bad 9 to 5, I bet you would have questioned your cog-like existence at some point. Well, I did. The funny part is I didn't even realize that I needed something more until like 2 months went by.
You wake up. Log in. Crop images. Write something stupid. Submit. Do it 25 times. Log off. Lather, rinse, repeat. Easy money.
Just had to sit in front of my PC for 9 hours typing shit that won't be valued any time soon. Sounds easy, right?
I like to whine about life especially when it's too easy for me. My psychologist insisted that I stay so that I'd have something, anything to do every day. According to her, staying still is the worst thing you could do to yourself when you're depressed.
And I agreed. I still do. I would say that's exactly why I quit a week after she said that to me. But I wanna bring to light my actions leading up to the day when I threw in the towel.
The last week was dreadful. I wanted to end it for real. I wrote about it earlier in one of the posts.
I didn't feel like doing anything. I didn't feel like waking up.
So I didn't. Until noon.
I didn't feel like doing the crappy work. So I put it off.
I hated it so much that I couldn't even bear to look at my monitor to watch YouTube or something. By then, that desk and chair had become a torture chamber.
I procrastinated the whole week on one task or another and that extended into my "life" too.
I missed the gym, I was mean to my mom. I'd become a monster who wouldn't get anything done. I was disgusted with myself. So, I fired the email on Sunday at midnight.
I don't regret what I did. Not even a little bit. I mean, I'm broke now but that wasn't worth it.
Being there made me procrastinate. Especially on what I loved doing.
Being there made me an asshole. To people close to me.
Being there took away my peace.
All because I didn't have the "something more" that I desperately needed to stay alive. And if you were wondering, I didn't know this when I quit. It was only after hours of journaling every idiot thought in my head that I discovered this. Was tough…
My psycho(logist) was right when she asked me to stay cuz I'd have something to do. But just having something to do didn't cut it.
To get out of depression, You need habits — habits that would make you feel alive, energized, rejuvenated, and most importantly, happy.
But the ones you have to fill your day shouldn't drive you onto the road to death with a pit-stop of deep depression.
"The worst stress for people isn't having to bear a lot of responsibility.
It is, having to endure work that is monotonous, boring, soul-destroying; where they die a little when they come to work each day because their work touches no part of them that is them."
- Michael Marmot, psychiatrist, in Lost Connections by Johann Hari
Exercise:
Set an hourly reminder on your phone. Every time it beeps, record your mood in your Notes app. Write how you feel in one sentence. Or more if you can. At the end of the work day, read it through.
Do this for 5 days. Analyze. Find the why behind your current work.
If you can't find one, repeat for 5 more days.
If you still can't find one, accept the fact there isn't one. Sit with it. Start planning your next move in Life. It's time.
the mistreated symptom
Picture this.
You're 13. You're a nerd who gets straight A's. But you're fat. Kinda.
You got a cold. You go to a doctor. The doctor gives you 5 pills. You eat those pills. Et voila! You don't have a cold anymore.
(If I had a penny for every visit to the white coat, I would've retired by now.)
To the 13-year-old you, getting sick every week was normal. The doctor seeing you regularly was normal. Eating pills with dinner every night was normal.
You never thought to question this then. Because the regular visits have become a part of your identity.
"YOU" = "The fat nerd kid who gets straight As but gets sick often cuz he works so damn hard."
Being ignorant, you thought "working hard" was the reason that you were getting sick. If you're getting sick often, then you gotta be working my ass off. Right?
The jocks never really talked to you unless they wanted a math problem solved. You thought you were better than them. You thought you had nothing to learn from them. Sports are lame. They are lame. Why bother?
Fast forward 10 years, and you're lifting in the last place the younger you would have expected to be in life. And poof! The doctor visits disappeared just like that.
What changed?
Problem: You not moving your ass.
Symptom: You getting a cold.
Received Solution: Shoving 5 pills down your throat daily.
Required Solution: Moving your ass.
Alright, you're you now.
Let's say you put off doing some shit because you didn't feel like doing it.
But you wanna get the shit done. Bad.
So, you chase every productivity guru on X and Instagram and buy their course. Maybe you're a rich fuck so you become a premium member to get 1-on-1 coaching.
You consume those methods. You get shit done. All of it. So, you treat yourself to Domino's. Hurray…
(You know where I am going with this, right?)
A week later, you get more shit to do.
But now that you're a productivity prick, you think you're gonna get it done in less time, than it'll take you to tell me to go f*ck myself.
Tick...tock…tick…
HO…LY…SHIT!!
The worst has happened.
How…could you?
All those courses and mentors were for nothing? F*cking scammers!
You conclude they're all BS. And you're right back where you were.
Where were you again?
Problem: You not being able to get your shit done.
Symptom: You procrastinating getting your shit done.
Received Solution: Get any shit done in < 0.8245629843 minutes using the jet-out-of-my-ass-productivity formula.
Required Solution: Knowing why your shit means to you.
Productivity doesn't mean shit if you don't have a purpose.
You would procrastinate anyway if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing.
The only way to stay away from depression is to have a why.
Nothing else will drive you.
I may have gone a little too far with the swearing and the story but you catch my drift. If you keep treating your problems from what you see, you will never be able to get rid of them completely. Never.
Take it from me. As a master procrastinator and as someone who has been deeply depressed, you don't wanna attack anything at the surface level.
To paint a little picture, this is the path I tread when I am procrastinating.
Lack of purpose —> Procrastination —> Self-hating —> Depression —>?
I don't wanna know what's next. And neither do you.
you compare, you die.
When looking for a purpose, the first tempting thing that you would wanna do is to pick one that is so big that you could brag about it. And then compare yourself to Musk who's on his way to habilitate Mars.
The OG's might be boring AF to listen to, but they were right when they famously didn't say:
Comparison is the thief of joy, but it's also a fucking bitch that'll make you wanna chuck your phone out the window.
— a drunk.
The second you start comparing, you lose the power to stay in control of your actions. Every single move of yours, you will compare it to that of your idol's.
"Oh, how did he do this? Why can't I? Isn't my why strong enough as his? Or is it because he's just hotter?"
Personally, comparison has never been on the same side as my life. If you wanna get better, you will compare. You will need a reference as to who you need to become, and who you could become. Because you're human, you crave it.
But you don't stop there, do you? Ruin happens when you forget that you need to stop.
You need to stop cuz no matter how much you look at your God, Musk, whoever, you will always be waaaayyyyy below in a deep dark pit, and worse, you will feel the walls closing in, suffocating.
My point is,
Your purpose could be conventionally lame, yet strong enough to pull you out of bed.
Keep it simple. Keep it stupid. Keep it lame. It's fine.
It could be as simple as,
"I do this because this makes my dog happy every day",
"I do this so I get to read my favorite fiction at night",
or if you're a hustler,
"I do this so I could finally retire and take my parents on the cross-country railroad they've been dying to go on."
Nothing grand.
So long as your why means something to you, even just a tiny bit, you're doing phenomenal than the rest of the world. But, if you don't stop endlessly comparing, your life inevitably will get depressing.
But I'm not gonna skip over the hard pill to swallow. The thing I will end this letter with.
Not comparing sucks. Resisting any natural human instinct sucks. But that only means it's a good thing. Not comparing means that you would have to face its close frenemy.
Confrontation.
Depression overshadows any kind of confrontation that you'll have to do with yourself; and will make your life hell if you even think about doing it for a millisecond. To make getting it simpler, we'll use the same framework as earlier:
Received solution: Comparison with others.
Required solution: Confrontation with self.
We'll talk about this more in the next letters.
I'm not gonna lie to you about how painful the process will be. I also don't wanna exaggerate the worst part of it so that you completely avoid doing it either.
So, I'll leave you with this.
Any remedy you receive from depression should be questioned, especially if you're used to receiving it again and again. Your why will help you.
If you don't have one, find one. Search until you find one that you can own.
That's all for this letter. Thanks for sticking to the end. Love you.
Karthik