I’ve been asked to redesign a few company sites to make them more appealing. here’s the original:

and here’s my first redesign

Sadness and depression are strange mental beasts.  Having danced with them for most of my life, I can scarcely remember a time when they didn’t lurk at least in the background of even my most shining moments.  Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes, and sometimes it just generates nearsightedness.

In talkig to a friend, I was discussiong someone who — while suffering an obvious bout of depression — has given up on many simple tasks most adults take for granted.  Bathing, for instance, or brushing teeth.  Personally I have a daily routine that’s part of my morning preparation for work, and again as my preparation for sleep.  This routine adds structure to my morning, and helps ensure that I don’t end up at my desk at work with no pants on.

And yet what can be said of a grown man who neglects bathing?  I have, at times in my life, also neglected my fastidious personal hygiene routine.  This generally happened during my own battles with depression, at times when I was unemployed, lonely, or trying to come to grips with the demons in my past.  Yet during those times, particularly when I was most lonely, I always felt that if I had SOMEONE to love and care for me I could find my way out.

And then I look at this man who has children and a wife, and struggles the same way I struggled.

Like some of Siddartha’s realizations, we see that the circumstances in life do not lessen the sting of suffering.  In fact, in many situations, having things or people only magnifies the problem.

Suffering is defined in Buddhist terms as our response to things we regret or things we cannot change.  For the context of this discussion, we can define suffering and sadness in the same family.  Sadness is emotional pain, and is often caused by many of the same root sources of karmic and spiritual suffering.

And what is pain?  Why must we, as beings capable (were many animals appear incapable) of determining the causes of our discomfort, endure even temporary pain?

Pain is a tool.  It exists in its physical form as an alert that our body has been damaged.  Without it, many of us would have at least been slower to learn a sense of balance or care for our physical selves.

Is it not fair to likewise deem that emotional and spiritual pain serves a similar purpose?  Just as a pain in my hand exists to indicate to my body that “something is wrong” with that appendage, wouldn’t a pain in my mind or soul exist to inform me that “something is wrong” in those parts of my being?

If I experience debilitating pain in my emotional self, I could (were I mentally present enough) surmise that something in my emotional life was unhealthy, and in need of either therapy or care in order to heal.

Depression and sadness are strange beasts in that they self perpetuate.  Often the knowlege that you are depressed will depress you further, sending you into a downward spiral that has almost no limit before self destruction.  Is this not, perhaps, because our society has an unhealthy approach to sadness?

In our culture, instead of recognizing sadness as a natural indicator of needed healing or change, we often blunder about trying to cover the wound with various emotional bandages.  We use personal relationships, material possessions, entertainment, and diversion to try and numb the pain.  This would be equivalent to visiting the emergency room with a gaping wound, and having the doctor perscribe an anasthetic only.   While it is true that a loss of the pain sensation can help begin the healing, anesthesis only BEGINS the process of eventual healing.

All of this can lead to a blind alley in which we face the dead end of “how do I get better?”  But the first task, in my opinion, is to stop being buried in sadness, and recognize it for what it is.

Sadness is merely the signal that things must change in order for healing to occur.

One of the beautiful things about the finite nature of mortal existance is that things will ALWAYS change eventually, and so all men will find healing in some form.

if you look close, you can see me giving a thumbs up as i role out of the dealership

Spaces close in around us often.

As a child I felt buried alive by the space around me.  I was buried in my unchanging position as the baby of the family, buried by the secret of my brother’s abuse, buried by the weight of a god who died for my evil nature, buried by the knowlege that his death meant i was supposed to perform miracles in his name, buried by the fact that I was the legacy for a family shredded by abuse and emotional dysfunction, buried by the social ineptitude that all these things caused, and buried by the isolation and loneliness that resulted from my inability to socialize.

It’s actually a surprise I lived through being buried alive for so long.

Unfortunately, rather than a quick unearthing from these things, I’ve been slowly digging myself free year by year, idea by idea, experience by experience.  It may be a long time before the dirt under my soul’s fingernails is cleaned away.

What often causes me a state of depression is the sense that I am again buried.

In my present case, I’m again buried by my financial situation, by the setbacks in finding an affordable car, by living (for the second time) out of a friend’s house (even if the first time was brought on by an act of trust and brotherhood), by being so alone.

“All a man truly wants is unconditional love.”

J used to say that often.

It’s why men die for the women they love.  Why they traverse miles, endure war and death, why we go on when hope is a pinprick of fading light on a distant horizon.  The promise of love.

I have felt since childhood that I was unlovable.  I have also felt that no one truly understood me.  I’m not sure if the two feelings spring from the same source, but it makes for a strange dynamic.  On one hand I am compelled to seek love to quell my inner loneliness, but on the other hand I often feel that the love I receive is limited or unstable.  The vicious circle continues.

In my present case, I feel like sand is running out in my situation.  The sand of people’s patience with me, and my patience with them.

Last night I had to talk myself down from some fairly potent anger, after the third time I woke up to a chorus of “Murphin’ man the murphin man the murphin man a murphin ma-an…”

When someone you live with sings all the time — to themselves, the dogs, the walls, the television, their dinner — and sings the same little tuneless songs over and over and over and over…  your patience becomes like a frayed cord holding a great weight.

On the one hand we have my two last and best friends providing their home to me as a place to spring from, like a seed from wet earth.

On the other hand, there are habits that push me to utter fury.

I could remind myself the things I learned in college.  I could recall how in children’s literature they teach that even meter and rhyme are vocal tools used to comfort children.  The repetition of sound lends comfort in a world that is largely frightening due to their lack of experience.  Armed with this bit of information, we can surmise that a person who repeats sounds over and over again does so as a means to comfort themselves.

With compassion I can try to overlook the generall rudeness of it.

Unfortunately, I’m human, and my compassion flags just as, I’m sure, their patience with me does.

None of this changes the essential truth.  I must leave here, and in order to do that, I must have a car, and a place to live.

Nothing so important in my life has happened at the speed I wished.  All important things seem to happen at their own pace, in their own timing.  So i must still myself.  quiet my spirit.  and do with diligence those things that will push me forward in my life.