What depression demands
\u201cDepression demands that we reject simplistic answers, both \u2019religious\u2019 and \u2019scientific\u2019, and learn to embrace mystery, something our culture resists. Mystery surrounds every deep experience of the human heart: the deeper we go into the heart\u2019s darkness or its light, the closer we get to the ultimate mystery of God. But our culture wants to turn mysteries into puzzles to be explained or problems to be solved, because maintaining the illusion that we can \u2019straighten things out\u2019 makes us feel powerful. Yet mysteries never yield to solutions or fixes \u2014 and when we pretend that they do, life becomes not only more banal but also more hopeless, because the fixes never work.\u201d
Parker Palmer can identify strongly with those who have undergone (or are going through) clinical depression. He went through a long period of it in his 40s, and even long after he had come out of it \u2014 and he isn\u2019t sure why he was able to climb out of it while many are not \u2014 he wasn\u2019t able or willing to share his experience. Depression is the \u201cultimate state of disconnection.\u201d While Palmer doesn\u2019t wish the experience on anyone, he does believe that it now marks a pivotal passage on his pilgrimage toward self-hood and vocation.
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