One of the gifts my depression has given me is an innate sense of mortality. There’s an epidemic of people living day after day as if there will always be another day to follow. I feel close to death and am unafraid of it. My fear is of living a meaningless life. Sometimes I feel so near to death that I’m overwhelmed by the need to fill what life I have with goodness and giving and loving. And that’s how I want to live. I don’t want to waste money on useless things, I have limited time and money – it needs to be doing something. I want to give my holidays to help others because you only get so many holidays. Doing things for the sake of doing them is absolutely loathsome. I don’t have time to throw away on an inane life – I have an urgency to get to the meaningful.

“This is not a story of transformation but one of integration. Lincoln didn’t do a great work because he solved the problem of his melancholy. The problem of his melancholy was all the more fuel for his great work.” -Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln’s Melancholy 

I can only hope that my life, however “long”, will leave something behind.