A More Nuanced Telling

Could all of my recent lucky stem from becoming a leprechaun?

I’ve been publishing a lot of musings lately that focus on how good I feel. 

“I frequently feel like I’m living the world’s luckiest lifetime,” I mused on August 10th.

“I’m having one of those days where I feel like I’m such a gift to the world,” I wrote on August 9th.

Then yesterday, I added to the “isn’t my life awesome?” vibe with, “These days, I’m so grateful on a daily basis to simply feel good–to have energy, vitality, joie de vivre–that the rest doesn’t matter.”

And something inside of me grimaced a bit. Let’s not shove it down people’s throats, huh Keely?

I do try for balance, of course. In July, I published a post called, “Surviving,” that talked about all the Doritos I was eating to try to cope with life.

But there’s a part of me that wants to provide more context. Not just because I don’t want to seem obnoxiously positive (can you even trust a person who talks so much about their life being great?), but because there’s an important clarification that is directly relevant to my day-to-day life.

Once upon a time, I was a human who struggled with chronic depression. That meant that, no matter what my life looked like on the outside, I could reliably expect the “black dog” of depression to creep up every few months and drain me of my vitality.

In those days, I could be making progress on my most important goals, or trying to deepen the relationships that mattered most to me, then something would shift. My energy, my drive, my good nature, my very give-a-damn, it would disappear. In its place, I’d be left with apathy and exhaustion.

Much of the work I’ve done over the last decade or so has been focused on shifting that reality. These days, I don’t suffer from chronic depression. I don’t live in a constant state of vigilance, wondering when the rug is going to be pulled out from under me.

Thanks to encountering the right people, places and things at the right time, I had the good fortune to heal my chronic depression. It’s not in my system anymore. It doesn’t creep up and knock me out like it used to. That’s why I’m so passionate about shamanism. It helped me so much that I want other people to know it’s an option.

I am, however, still an unenlightened human. Unlike the Dalai Lama or Pema Chödron, I don’t live in a perpetual state of peace and joy.

I’m a human having a human experience.

Sometimes I’m happy. Sometimes I’m sad. Sometimes I have a lot of energy. Sometimes I’m drained.

I don’t always take care of my physical body as well as I want to. I usually hit a wall mid-afternoon because I can’t bring myself to cook the food my body wants when ordering takeout is so much easier. I’m envious of the women who have mastered embodiment because I’m painfully far from living fully in my body.

I have lots of things going for me. I also have patterns and behaviors that work against me.

That’s what the human experience is. For those of us who are unenlightened, at least. I really do think it’s possible to live in a perpetual state of peace and joy, so I never want to fall into the easy trap of saying, “This is just what it is to be a human.” We have a path out of suffering. We can reach a point where we feel good all the time, no matter what the outside circumstances. But walking that path requires both a lot of effort and a lot of luck. So many things have to go right to reach that state that not many of us will. (I grimace a bit to use the word “enlightened” and would love a suggestion on a better way to capture what I’m trying to express.)

Because that’s what today’s musing comes down to: how I capture and express things.

When I do my morning musings, I try not to exceed two typed pages. I’m a wordy, wordy (WORDY) gal. It’s easy for me to get swept away trying to be “impeccable with my word.” Look, for instance, to that last paragraph for an example.

I tend towards wordiness because I believe in nuances. We don’t live in a black-and-white world. We live in shades of gray. When I try to capture that, however, the word count can get out of control.

So, when I enthusiastically chatter on about how good I feel and how grateful I am to feel this way–it’s because I’m comparing my current reality to my past reality…I just don’t have the space in my two typed pages to clarify that every time I write.

My life is significantly better than it used to be. There are people who are happier than me, people who have more inner peace, people who are thriving and flourishing in ways I can only dream of.

But Keely of 2012 would likely give anything to have Keely of 2022’s life. To not have to worry about depression knocking her out every few months. To reliably wake up with energy. To enjoy the path she’s on. To cherish the partner who’s walking beside her. To, in broad strokes, feel good.

So, there’s a little bit of the nuance behind the, “isn’t my life so great?!” writing.

My life is great. It’s great because I cherish it. Because I’m grateful for the gifts I’ve been given. To be a human having a human experience, with ups and downs that are linked to the highs and lows of day-to-day living? That’s something a depressed person only dreams of.

And, as a formerly depressed person, I’m over the moon to be living this dream.

Sending love and my fervent hope that we become a society that focuses more on root cause resolution, on actually healing things like depression, rather than continuing to focus on treating the symptoms.