How I feel about life and my depression

[MattMVS7]

I am an atheist and someone with chronic depression who feels that without the ability to fully enjoy this one and only life, then this life is worthless including me.  This is the one and only life and when I die, there will be no God and no afterlife which is the reason why I want this one and only life to be perfect (in terms of my mood and being able to fully enjoy life).  Therefore, I feel that this life is worthless not only because of my chronic depression, but also because there is no reward in the end for all your suffering (a God and an afterlife) which makes this life even more worthless.  This life gives you problems only to reward you with more problems for having these problems.  And it also rewards you with something to make you feel even worse: No God and no afterlife of eternal joy for all your suffering.

Also, I am someone who has (or in this case had) a dream to be a composer.  Music is all about feeling emotion and expressing emotion.  Since depression is something that takes away your emotions, then my whole pursuit of being a composer and expressing and feeling emotion from music is all dead and worthless which is why I have given that up.

It's well known that intelligent creative people are prone to be depressed.  But such intelligence and creativity is meant to be fully enjoyed.  Without the ability to fully enjoy those things, then these things are worthless.  Therefore, I hate my intelligence and creativity as it is the reason why I am depressed and I view it as worthless.  Not only that, I view it as a mockery because if you are given the greatest gift in the world and you are then forbidden from fully enjoying it, then this is a mockery.  If, for example, I found out that I was the greatest composer in the world, this would not make me happy.  It would make me feel enraged due to the fact that I have chronic depression which is preventing me from fully enjoying this talent (since the world's greatest talent is something that is MEANT to be fully enjoyed).

Now it would seem as though this life "wants" the greatest talented people in the world to struggle and to not be able to fully cherish their talents.  For example, Stephen Hawking has developed a rare condition that endangered his life.  Bethoven also had a rare condition that made him deaf.  I find it strange and no coincidence that these individuals with rare talents have developed rare life-threatening conditions to hinder their talents.  Stephen Hawking's condition severly impacted his scientific pursuits.  Not to mention, the most obvious of all (something that clearly hinders being a composer)--which would be being deaf as hearing is an absolute necessity for being a composer.  But having struggles in life is completely pointless because even though struggles do sometimes encourage you to push further, you can just as have as much motivation to push forward without struggles.

It would seem as though the more you choose to pursue a dream in life, the more struggles this life gives you.  This life "wants" you to struggle in order for you to achieve greatness. Therefore, if I choose to do the opposite of what this life "wants" by choosing to instead give up, then it might be likely that my problems in life will disappear and my chronic depresssion will go away completely.  But if I choose to pursue my dream despite my chronic depression, then it might be likely that my problem of chronic depression will persist my entire life in order to make me struggle to achieve greatness through my music.  But it would also seem that this life "chooses" to allow people to pursue their talents despite their struggles.  For example, Stephen Hawking was supposed to die in 2 years from his condition and yet, he has lived on for many years.  This says that this life has "chosen" for him to live in order to achieve greatness.

Therefore, if this life wishes to choose me to achieve greatness, then it is going to have to completely rid of my depression.  If I choose to pursue my music despite my depression, then it will be likely that my depression will last forever. Which is why I have given up which puts life itself in a position where if this life so desires for me to get back to pursuing my music to achieve greatness, then it's going to have to completely rid of my depression.  Otherwise, as long as I'm still depressed, I will never get back to pursuing my music.

If I had the choice to either be someone who is a genius with depression or someone who is happy with no intelligence, I would choose to be the happy person with no intelligence.  The person (part of me) who is intelligent and chooses to struggle in order to achieve greatness through music is the person I hate.  But the person (other part of me) who lives a lifestyle of someone with ignorant bliss who plays videogames is the person I love.  The reason I pursue music is because of my value towards feeling and expressing emotion.  So it  means everything in the world to me for me to be in perfect emotional health.  But this value I have only serves to bring me hate as my chronic depression compromises my emotional health.  In other words, me pursuing music brings me hate as I have chronic depression.

This is the reason why I have given up my value towards my emotional well being in music and have focused on going back to playing videogames because I find that when I play videogames, nothing in the world matters (not even my emotional well-being) unlike my pursuit in music in which everything matters which only serves to bring me frustration due to my depression.  If I didn't have depression at all right now, I would pursue my music with full enjoyment and motivation with no feelings of hate or frustration whatsoever.

Finally, if you think my views here are somehow flawed, I am going to present the scientific truth here for people who think that the things we do in life have more value than any amount of personal pleasure (this even goes for any value you have towards yourself as a human being).  No amount of intelligence or great things we do in life will ever make up for a lack of pleasure because in order to have such value towards these things is to have pleasure in the first place (as pleasure is what allows us to give value in terms of emotion towards these things). So it would be illogical to say that these things have greater value than our pleasure. Now if you were to somehow have value towards something with no pleasure, then this value would be nothing as it is nothing more than a thought. Pleasure is what gives any notion of value life and without pleasure, it would be completely dead. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing that matters and any notion of value is just a thought and nothing more. It is the processes in our own brains that give these things life in terms of value. Without such a process (which would be the process of experiencing pleasure in the brain), then they will have no such life.

It is, therefore, a moral to think that any amount of intelligence or great things we do in life holds greater value than our pleasure.  Morals are not logic or science (fact)--they are false and irrational.  This is the reason why I would give up all my intelligence and creativity in order to live a life of ignorant bliss in which I have no intelligence and have all the joy in the world with no depression.

[kat108katt]

Prestiq is a good anti depressent if your doctor has no clue scince most docters are just working to get a quick pay, all doctors dont know everything,  but pristiq has worked for me, you never know unless you try, i mean if you dont shower in the mornings you start to smell right, its the same, as if you dont try something, how do you know if it will work or not unless you give it a go,if you cant find prestiq look it up in google it will give you a basis infomation on it, if you dont trust the name, i dont know what else to say to you, as i suffer from depression, also, cronic depression, have scince i was a child, im 25, now, with a child of my own, so many people suffering from depression all over the world, so many people end up dead because of it, but if you have a strong will, then you can get better, but if you despise change,,,, then you wont you will stay put, in the situation that you are in,

[Jinx_777]

i read where you have tried anti anxiety medication, but i am talking about anti depressants.  
even then you have to make sure you are on the right kind.  for example, i CANNOT take the most popular kind of anti depressants, i have to have the oldest kind...tricyclic.  
when i finally found the RIGHT kind, it was as if someone turned on a light switch exactly 6 weeks after starting it.  i was absolutely amazed.  my energy, my drive was back to the way it was at one time.  
you should not just stop and throw your hands in the air because one kind did not help you.  keep fighting until you find THE one.

[Jinx_777]

have you ever just considered trying an anti depressant and getting on with your life???  nobody say's you HAVE to have faith in anything, but there is factual data that people who have faith in SOMETHING are overall happier people.
if you have clinical depression then that is simply a chemical imbalance that can be treated.  your outlook on life however; will be much harder to overcome.

[Paxiled]

Matt, I really think you're just trying to vent here.  You can't believe what you're saying, it's just so absolutely false in every way factually.  Science has never ever ever concluded that morals are false and irrational.  Quite the contrary, without morals there is no possibility for survival of any species.  These morals might seem odd but every species has a code of conduct, including humans.  You absolutely don't need to invent religion to know that if you kill your neighbor or sleep with your friends' wives trouble will follow, and trouble is best avoided so we don't all kill each other.  Atheists aren't amoral, they just derive their moral values from practical thinking rather than religious faith.  But the moral values are pretty much the same.  That isn't to say we follow these moral values very well, even when we admit they would make things better.  Science also doesn't recognize pleasure at all as being important, though it does recognize it as being, well, pleasurable, and no scientist would say we should have a life of all pleasure or not pleasure, they just collect information but surprisingly little factual truth at this point.  And everything we do is based on a thought and nothing more.  We could all just decide to stop eating and die.  But we don't, we still strive and follow the thoughts our brain is producing.  It doesn't make any sense, but factual reality doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be understood if you're truly educated in scientific thinking.  But then the scientist goes home from the lab and has to decide how to best raise his or her kids and treat one another, so in action scientists are just like anyone else.  So given that all this is so obvious, what is it you're really trying to elicit from us?

[nursegirl6572]

I'm not sure what else to tell you, Matt.  You've been so resistant to the idea of trying to change your thinking.  You take a hard line approach and that's that.  Not everything is always that cut and dry.  You get way hung up on facts and science, when there's a LOT more to humans than that.

[MattMVS7]

So you obviously view the pursuit of a work of art to have greater value than your pleasure (which would be drive in this case).  But as I just said, it is a moral to feel that way. According to science, morals are false and irrational. The scientific truth would be that you should not feel that way and your pleasure is something that comes first above any amount of will to pursue a work of art because, again, without pleasure, this "will" to pursue is just a thought and nothing more (a dead worthless thought) because pleasure is what gives life to your thoughts and without pleasure, any thought of value you have towards something is dead and worthless.

[Paxiled]

I get you, I really do.  My creative life has been destroyed as well -- but not by depression, but by the medication I used to help with anxiety.  So yeah, life is pretty terrible to someone every minute of every day.  But I also think you missed the point of your own argument.  Beethoven created his best work while deaf.  Steven Hawking created his best work while ill.  What they had was drive.  If you don't have drive, whether you're depressed or not you're still not going to get anywhere as far as getting art out to the public is concerned.  And even then, most artists of every stripe never get published and nobody ever sees or hears their work -- the state of the economy determines that.  It has always been easier for already known people, for example, to get noticed than the unknown.  But depression among famous artists is a cliche it's so common and they persevered and produced their work.  So depression doesn't stop everyone from working.  Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime, but in his worst last years suffering from horrible mental and physical illness he produced an astounding one painting a day.  Herman Melville never knew Moby **** became such a respected work -- he died before later writers made his most notable work known to the public.  Art is a capricious field to try to make it in for anyone.  Depression never stopped me from writing or making music, but it did make it very hard for me to know how to get it before the public.  It took a drug that destroyed the part of my brain that is the creative part to do that.  So I've just got to disagree about your main premises -- success in art has never made anyone happy, and happiness is irrelevant to success in art.

[nursegirl6572]

Did you ever read my reply on your last thread?