[Music] What would you say to someone who is contemplating suicide? Oh, I'd probably ask him to...

come have a beer with me in some sort of more cheerful setting than the one he inhabits, which is evidently

depressing. But suicide is very prevalent among the young. We live in a... in a society that is ill in some ways. It used

to be that uh... people set a lower bar on life. They felt fulfilled if they got a small fraction of the gratification that

people now expect. Unfortunately, people are being misled and led to expect a lot more gratification than the world

actually has for them, at least along the material avenues of which people are made aware. There's only so much stuff in

the world; you can only get so much stuff. People only have so much attention to lavish on each other, so you can't be the

center of attention all the time. Yet many people expect this kind of thing. They've been spoiled in certain ways, and

when they don't get what they want, like small children, they, you know, scream, hold their breath until they turn blue, and

then once they... they've held their breath long enough, you know, then of course they die. So that's, you know, basically

the problem. It's a problem of reality not being able to match the overblown, bloated expectations that people have

these days. In your 20s, you're likely to encounter something like a breakup, or a lost job, or a failed college

application. It can seem like the end of the world to you. Most of us have survived all three of these things, along

with many other setbacks. If you think back to the worst disaster of your youth, the depth of devastation experienced at

the time probably seemed horrible, seemed... seemed intolerable. But with the wisdom of hindsight, you now see it wasn't so

Bad, so you've got to learn to wait things out. You don't allow your feelings of depression to get the better of you

on the spot. What you do is you say, 'Wait a minute, this is abnormal.' Use a little bit of metacognition and you

realize this is not really, you know, reflective of life in general. Now, I'm very, very depressed. I can't act as

though life in general is this depressing. However, when one is in the throes of catastrophe, you know, at that

age and has never experienced any major setbacks, uh, you know, especially in today's society where everybody is

pampered and everyone gets a participation prize just for waking up in the morning, one may think that the

anguish that one is experiencing will never end. It might seem eternal, but once again, the metacognition should tell you

no, this is not eternal, and it could be a hell of a lot worse. I could be in hell.

Okay, this is not hell; this is much better. You've actually got a way to recover and follow teleology. No matter

what your position in life, there is always room for improvement, and if you want to improve, you can. The problem is that

society is no longer encouraging people to participate in their own destinies; it's trying to map their destinies out

for them.  In those days, destinies are unhealthy; they're materialistic. Basically, you're a stimulus-

response machine, a consumer that is just supposed to show up at the factory—well, I mean, they don't even have a

factory job for you anymore—but you're just supposed to consume things and do what you're told and, uh, resign yourself

to your disempowerment. And if you don't do that, then they don't care about you.

at all, then you become, you know, a malcontent, a deviant, you know, a racist or an anti-semite, or something of this

nature. Some they call you something that will allow them to dismiss you and, along with your disempowerment, to prove that

you don't actually deserve to have anything, that way they can wash their hands of you with a clean conscience, or

a conscience that they think is clean. What you have to do is take charge of your destiny and find meaning in your

life through your spirituality and your relationships with other people. Your mood will eventually improve, things will eventually change, and things are going

to get better for you. The immediate devastation that you feel in your gut, it'll gradually fade, and you'll come to

the point that you can look back and maybe not laugh at it, but at least move on, probably sooner than you

Chris Langan - How to Overcome Depression - CTMU

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