On Details – Intro (The little things)

One “symptom” of depression is an overwhelming feeling of “emptiness.” We feel like our entire lives have meant nothing – that we are nothing.

I believe that part of the battle in fighting depression is filling in the details. Being able to see the beauty in every day detail, and learning to take joy from and focus on that beauty, rather than on pain.

I was once hospitalized at one of the “best” clinics on the East coast. Among the activities we were encouraged to attend was “Art.”

Frankly, it was bullshit – infantilizing, demeaning, and ineffective. And the person who led the session did not at all grasp the nuance of what it’s like to struggle through the day with severe depression (granted, I’m sure it’s a highly variable experience). There were also 2 premed students joining us to “observe” – they seemed quite utterly detached from the group, and rather self-absorbed, which made me strongly question their future ability as doctors. But I digress.

Still, being a team player, I played along, if only half-heartedly.

Many of my fellow inpatients were dual diagnosis – in addition to depression, they concurrently struggled with (and were diagnosed with) disorders like alcoholism, narcotics addictions, etc.

Several made reference to their drug addictions in their art. One girl drew the street crossing and chicken joint where she met w/her dealer to purchase heroine. An older man (proudly) drew a horse, also in reference to heroin.

Some just scribbled on paper, with no particular aim at all.

Not knowing what to do, and never having been particularly artsy in terms of drawing/painting, I grabbed some colored pencils and a big blue plastic alphabet stencil off the ping-pong table (we actually used a ping-pong table as the table – the art room became the rec room later at night).

I folded in half a blank white piece of 8.5 by 11” printer paper, then stenciled out a word on the left half. I’m straining but can’t remember exactly what word (I could probably find it if I sifted through old boxes). I’m pretty sure it was just my name.

D A V I D

The letters on the stencil were pretty big, in terms of stroke width, so that there was room for me to trace the inside of each letter on the stencil w/a colored pencil and still have the interior of the letter still stay empty (white). I remember this pretty well - I think the stencil was originally designed for markers.

But then I grabbed another stencil, also made of dark blue plastic, from the ping-pong table. This one didn’t have any letters at all – it was just patterns. There were flowers, big and small, and the level of detail was astonishing, at least for a stencil.

On the right half of my piece of paper, I traced out a few of the flowers, again w/colored pencil, using different colors for the different parts of the flower. It came out really pretty, and not at all due to any artistic ability on my part – the stencil simply had very intricate detail.

Then I looked at my piece of paper, and thought about how I was going to present it to the group (we were supposed to talk about our artwork at the end of each session).

And then it hit me.

To some degree, I initially was really just bullshitting. Drawing whatever tenuous connection I could find b/w whatever things happened to be on the paper, just so I’d have something to say. (This is an essential survival skill that all students who go through today’s education system develop, and usually by the time we make it to college, we’ve got it pretty well honed)

But I took one look at the big empty letters on the left half of the paper, and then at the intricate flowers on the right half, and I knew exactly what I was going to say. It came out something to this effect:

“The left half of my paper embodies the emptiness and nothingness I feel when I think about my life. The right half is my hope for the future – where one day I’ll be able to fill myself up and learn to appreciate the small details again.”



They – famous architects, and wise people, and Chinese restaurant fortune cookies – say that God is in the details.

To some extent, I believe this – I find that many of the most miraculous things in life are things you wouldn’t notice unless you really paid attention.

With all this in mind, I’ve decided to start a series of posts on Details, of which this is the introductory post, where I will point out some of the every day (and not so every day) details that inspire me.

I guess this is really a subcategory of my series of posts on Joy, but it’s separate enough to merit a new category.

Hopefully you’ll learn to (start?) pay attention to some of the little things in life, and to find (create?) joy in doing so.

The little things - they’re some of the greatest gifts anyone could ever give or receive.

And they’re free.

-David

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