FINDING THE CALM

When I was 13, depression ruled my life. I did not want to survive, but I persisted. Why? The answer can be found in the reason I was depressed in the first place. I was overwhelmed by all the cruelty in the world. I did not want to live in such a world. However, both the legal system and most religions considered suicide a crime. But did I care?

I did believe in a greater presence than any human, so the condemnation of self-inflicted death caused me to pause.

If my life was in God’s control, then God could take it away. Nightly I prayed to die in my sleep. Waking disappointed, I prayed God would choose sometime during the day. And so, the days continued and I did not die.

But then I reasoned maybe it was really up to me after all. I began to plan the circumstances. In each case, I kept hitting the same wall. If I wanted to escape the world because there was too much ugliness and unhappiness, would not my death just add one more horror and burden to the record of history?

I would be guilty of creating exactly what I most hated. Could I do that? Make everything even worse? The question held me on the brink long enough for more thoughts to reach me. I knew there was a long history of others who searched for wisdom.

I began to pray for the wisdom to understand why people needed to be cruel. A wisdom which would make it possible to forgive without anger. A wisdom that would bring me peace.

Meditating on this thought, I stopped each day after school at my church which was never locked in those days. The friend who accompanied me on my walk home would wait outside. I was never long, just long enough to say my prayer asking for wisdom.

It was then I happened on my answer.

There were the philosophers. So many of them, but not one of them had found the single answer which all could agree upon. I was only 13, how I could I hope to do better than all those great minds?

I was never going to know why, not for certain, not ever. Strangely this realization freed me.

Later confronted by an estranged friend in the mood for argument, I saw a vision of our moment as a tiny dot on the world’s timeline. So tiny, so insignificant. Before my recent revelation, I would have been vulnerable facing this once-friend. But I was no longer.

In that moment I knew the darkness I had lived through in that 13^th year was ending. I had endured and would survive. My calmness completely confused my once-friend as I turned and walked away unperturbed by her attack. The worst was over.

Peace settled into my mind, my whole body, my view of the world thoroughly changed.