Depression Is the Rational Response to Being Alive

I’m starting to think the people who aren’t depressed might be the ones we should actually worry about.

I was at the movies the other day. I came in late. something about my car not starting, and then me driving too fast for my own good, and rushing in at the last moment, and standing in the popcorn line for too long with these teenagers being much too loud behind me. Popcorn doing its salty buttery popcorny thing to my nostrils, the way it always does.

When I finally got in, the theater was already dark. The kind of darkness that makes you reconsider all your life choices if you fight it. I just sat down somewhere random and it suddenly dawned on me: this is what I want from my life: this kind of quiet. This soothing darkness. This unassuming joy of something good about to happen while I’m quietly hiding in the black warm womb of something that hasn’t happened yet.

That’s what I want. Not this constant rush for productivity, and money, and status given by shiny cars and fat bank accounts. Don’t you?

We want the soothing darkness. But we get the whip.