‘Hell is other people’, Sartre wrote, and in fact, many interactions show that this is the case. ‘Nothing good ever happens to me!’ ‘No one appreciates me!’ ‘No one sees me!’ ‘The others don’t care; they do not think about me!’
We have all heard such statements. We all have this kind of people around us. We ourselves could sometimes drift into this negative state of mind.
They say we attract what we think: if we are positive, we attract good things; if we are negative, we draw in all that is bad. Surely, not everything will be great, nor will everything be bad.
It is in our nature to drift, from time to time, into a negative state of mind. All of us have both a bright side and a shadow. When we consume our bright side, the shadows start to take over. The shadow causes depression, a loss of meaning, and questions such as “What am I doing here? What is the point?’
The shadow is a creature that can easily take hold of us.
I think about the representations of Saint George who fought the dragon. In icons, St. George’s dragon is dark – it is as if St. George’s spear is piercing through darkness itself. Each of us must fight a continuous battle with darkness: the darkness that resides in each of us.
The depressive and depressed attitude is the state of emptiness people fall in. Often, a partner will not help you more than you can help yourself. We entrust someone else with the duty of taking us out of the darkness – which is not possible or fair because the other person has their own dark side. In reality, we are oblivious when we want the other person to brighten us; we think about what we want, not about what we have to give. In relation to others, each of us comes with our bright sides and shadows. I invite you to be more aware of them and to bring out more of that bright side within us. Who knows, we could draw in more light for ourselves.