from Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

All depression has its roots in self-pity,
and all self-pity is rooted in people
taking themselves too seriously.

The key word here is roots, the roots of
depression. For most people, self-awareness
and self-pity blossom simultaneously in
early adolescence. It’s about that time
that we start viewing the world as something
other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we
start to experience personally how
threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust.

At the very moment when we become for the
first time both introspective and socially
conscientious, we receive the bad news that
the world, by and large, doesn’t give a rat’s
ass. So there’s a tendency to slip into rage
and self-pity, which, if indulged, can fester
into bouts of depression.

Now unless someone stronger and wiser can
josh us out of it ... can elevate us and show
us how petty and pompous and monumentally
useless it is to take ourselves so seriously,
then depression can become a habit, which,
in turn, can produce a neurological imprint.
Gradually, our brain chemistry becomes
conditioned to react to negative stimuli
in a particular, predictable way. One
thing’ll go wrong and it’ll automatically
switch on its blender and mix us that black
cocktail, the ol’ doomsday daiquiri, and
before we know it, we’re soused to the gills
from the inside out.


Once depression has become electrochemically
integrated, it can be extremely difficult to
philosophically or psychologically override
it; by then, it’s playing by; physical rules,
a whole different ball game.

[We] might be every bit as important a the
President or the pope or the biggest prime-
time icon in Hollywood, but that none of us
is much more than a pimple on the ass-end of
creation, so let's not get carried away with
ourselves. It's preventive medicine ... self-
esteem is for sissies. Accept that you’re
a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of
humor about it. That way lies grace — and
maybe even glory.

— Tom Robbins