I’m struggling with a guy at work. No blame-casting. Surely there is plenty to go around. But the bottom line, from my point of view, is that he’s pretty doggone irritating to me. Since you go to work and spend the day in the situation, there’s relatively more “bearing with it” and relatively less “escaping from it”. This can lead to introspection. I realized today, that although his affect on me was making me feel unhappy, that was somewhat of an illusion. I realized that if the problem were gone, ergo no irritation, I still wouldn’t be happy.

Let me define that. When I’m riding a roller coaster I feel happy. When I’m playing in the ocean I feel happy. When my teeth are being drilled I feel unhappy. But I’m using the verb “feel”, not the verb “be”, as I did in the last paragraph. Without the workplace irritation, I would feel happier, for awhile, but I wouldn’t BE happy. That state-- maybe I should call it contentment-- doesn’t really issue from the absence of problems or the presence of nice stuff.

I spent several years suffering from bone-crushing depression and a number more being less depressed as I slowly rose back out of it. My world faded from color to black and white. I didn’t even know who I was. I could hardly function. I managed to stay employed, which was very nice. The marriage made it with an encouragingly small number of dents and sprung rivets. My suffering was not confined to me.

Now, why was I depressed? I think I have an enviable life. Call it having the world by the tail with a downhill pull. I think a lot of people would look at my circumstances and reasonably think that in my place, they would be happy. What was my problem?

How could I be depressed when such a wonderful lot fell to me? This question is logically equivalent to the following questions:

· How can he have a broken leg when he makes all that money?

· How can a person with such thick, wavy hair ever be blind?

· How can you have bunions when your singing voice is so beautiful?

I will illustrate why, but I have to go around the long way. The reason I was depressed was because pretty much all of the things that gave me self esteem were taken away at about the same time. So I kind of imploded. Not that those were things that could make me happy, but I didn’t realize that. They were propping me up nicely, which worked while they were there. That’s why I was depressed for so long. I had to hit the bottom and flounder around; then I had to find my real source of value; then I had to learn that those other props and crutches really were props and crutches.

I now believe that, at an unconscious level, I knew this at the outset. Here is the drill: Remember where I described the things that can make you feel happy, but cannot make you BE happy? Given a big enough shock, you need a lot of cheering up. And the “feel happy” things manifestly do not work. So one by one you go through candidates that would help you restore your tranquility, and realize that they are feel-happy’s, not be-happy’s. Then, somewhere in your heart, you reach the end of the list, and see that there IS no be-happy. What happens then? Depression, that’s what. Duh.

Maybe this is all in the category of things everybody knows in their heads. I can’t remember. When I knew it in my heart, it was a little doomsday. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to be, NOTHING to be. Nothing.

So I spent some time climbing up from that. But I’m going to skip forward to now.

Ah, Monday morning. Trudging to work, looking at a boring day. What’s the point? Can I hold on until there’s a holiday or vacation? What would I do then? So what? Is there anything that would divert me? Anything to compensate for all this drudgery? Not really, not enough.

Ah, I remember. That’s why that doesn’t work. I’m not here or anywhere else for my own gratification. I’m here to serve God, and since He’s a kind God, plugging in to that is the source of contentment. I have to drop the previous mindset and remember that I’m dependent, a creation, not my own. Christ called it dying. Christ was not kidding. Christ rose from his physical death, and he’s going to take me with him when the day comes. But Christ’s resurrection also prefigures my present, slow, ongoing resurrection from the death of myself.

And that’s why the presence or absence of John Doe doesn’t ultimately make any difference. That’s why I can have the salary and wife and kids and house and still be depressed. That’s why they sing hymns in Cuban dungeons and slash their wrists in Hollywood. And that’s why I’m going to be able to deal with John Doe. I was thinking I needed something from him for me to be happy. My mistake.