No, I’ve thankfully have never had to struggle with depression. Seeing and being a victim of oppression enrages me, saddens me, but it also drives and motivates me; but I has never depressed me.
I actually advocate giving up hope, hope tends to be a hindrance anyway. Your despair, anger, pain, rage, and all other negative emotions and thought are not only legitimate they are healthy. If you didn’t experience such feelings as a result of being oppressed and seeing the oppression of others you wouldn’t be fully human. Hope don’t help with that shit.
“Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.”
– Derrick Jensen
So don’t feel bad about being hopeless, or without hope, abandoning hope clears space for more useful sentiments like rationality, righteous indignation, and the clarity and vision that can only be achieved with we become intimate with the reality of the world and our position within it. These are the sentiments that feed Revolutions and Revolutionist.
I appreciate you seeing my positivity, I am a joyous person but people often don’t see that in me.
I stay positive by not giving a fuck about being positive really. My goal is to be rational ultimately. My efforts to be rational have directed me to generally in the right direction in both my political and personal life. I’ve make a lot of mistakes but I’ve enjoyed continuous growth and refinement.
I also don’t just experience emotions, I process them, work to learn from the sensation; from hate to love and all in between. I don’t avoid so-called negative emotions and chase so-called positive emotions, I navigate and appreciate the full spectrum; that give you more psychological balance. (I hope I’m being clear here, I’m trying to condense my response so I might confuse you….and yeah, I know I used “hope” after dissing “hope.” LOL!)
Anyway, all I’m saying is to be a complete and balanced individual as you engage the struggle for liberation; that’s all.
Getting really angry is not a problem, improperly processing and acting on the anger would be a problem, but improperly processing and acting on any emotion can get you into trouble, drive you to depression, or distract you from what really matters. So embrace your anger and build with it; if it becomes your dominate state, or unshakable find constructive outlets for it. Don’t deny or try to escape your anger, work through it, if you start ducking it, it will become pathological.
I always make time of doing shit I like, I keep a realistic outlook, a Pan-African perspective, and I have really good people around me, really, really good people. Building a good and wide support network is key.
The only way to build a such a support network is to truly give a fuck about people, not just because of what they can do for you, not because they are personal to you, but valuing people for their inherent value. There’s a lot of rhetoric and memes about how people will take your care for granted, or how you can’t trust people, but a lot of that is projection. If you are a good ally, comrade, relative, supporter you will develop that support network.
If you are balanced, if you truly GAF about people you will begin to repel shitty people, eventually. Be a good, loyal, dependable, honest, and open person (an angry when you need to be) and you’ll being to be balanced, and thus a greater asset to your struggle, your community, and to yourself.
I sorry that I went all over the place, hope you got some clarity outta this. Take care Anon.
