(this article was originally published in New York Times on Oct 28, 2009)
All progress paves over some bit of knowledge or washes away some valuable practice. Within a few years, e-mail and Twitter moved the art of letter writing to the trash bin. And in an age when all psychic life is being understood in terms of neurotransmitters, the art of introspection has become passé. Galileos of the inner world, such as Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), have been packed off to the museum of antiquated ideas. Yet I think that the great and highly quirky Dane could help us to retrieve a distinction that has been effaced.
These days, confide to someone that you are in despair and he or she will likely suggest that you seek out professional help for your depression. While despair used to be classified as one of the seven deadly sins, it has now been medicalized and folded into the concept of clinical depression. If Kierkegaard were on Facebook or could post a You Tube video, he would certainly complain that we, who have listened to Prozac, have become deaf to the ancient distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair.
There is abundant chatter today about “being spiritual” but scarcely anyone believes that a person can be of troubled mind and healthy spirit. Nor can we fathom the idea that the happy wanderer, who is all smiles and has accomplished everything on his or her self-fulfillment list, is, in fact, a case of despair. But while Kierkegaard would have agreed that happiness and melancholy are mutually exclusive, he warns, “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”
Despair is marked by a desire to get rid of the self, an unwillingness to become who you fundamentally are.
Kierkegaard was called “the Fork” as a child because of his uncanny ability to find people’s weaknesses and stick it to them. His lapidary “Sickness Unto Death” is a study of despair, which in the Danish derives from the notion of intensified doubt. Almost as a challenge to keep out the less than earnest reader, Kierkegaard begins “Sickness” with this famous albeit slightly ironic bit of word play:
A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation relating itself to itself in the relation.
For those who do not immediately pitch the book across the room, the magister continues, “A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.” Despair occurs when there is an imbalance in this synthesis. From there Kierkegaard goes on to present a veritable portrait gallery of the forms that despair can take. Too much of the expansive factor, of infinitude, and you have the dreamer who cannot make anything concrete. Too much of the limiting element, and you have the narrow minded individual who cannot imagine anything more serious in life than bottom lines and spread sheets.
Though it will make the Bill Mahers of the world wince, despair according to Kierkegaard is a lack of awareness of being a self or spirit. A Freud with religious categories up his sleeves, the lyrical philosopher emphasized that the self is a slice of eternity. While depression involves heavy burdensome feelings, despair is not correlated with any particular set of emotions but is instead marked by a desire to get rid of the self, or put another way, by an unwillingness to become who you fundamentally are. This unwillingness often takes the form of flat out wanting to be someone else. Kierkegaard writes:
An individual in despair despairs over something. So it seems for a moment, but only for a moment; in the same moment the true despair or despair in its true form shows itself. In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself, and now he wants to be rid of himself. For example, when the ambitious man whose slogan is “Either Caesar or nothing” does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it … precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he cannot bear to be himself.
In America, there is endless talk of the importance of having a dream — that is, a dreamed-up self that you will to become: a millionaire, a surgeon, or maybe the next Dylan or George Clooney. But master of suspicion that Kierkegaard was, he goes on to note that while the man who has failed to become Caesar would have been in seventh heaven if he had realized his dream, that state would have been just as despairing in another way — because in that giddy self-satisfied condition, he would never have come to grasp his true self.
On the issue of depression of which Kierkegaard and his entire family were very well acquainted, Kierkegaard could have been a reductionist. He seems to have recognized that we could be born into the blues. In 1846, he sighed:
I am in the profoundest sense an unhappy individuality, riveted from the beginning to one or another suffering bordering on madness, a suffering which must have its basis in a mis-relation between my mind and body, for (and this is the remarkable thing as well as my infinite encouragement) it has no relation to my spirit, which on the contrary, because of the tension between my mind and body, has gained an uncommon resiliency.
The spirit is one thing, the psyche another: The blues one thing, despair another.
How might Kierkegaard have parsed the distinction for the Doubting Thomas who will only believe what he can glean on an M.R.I.? Perhaps he would describe it this way.
Each of us is subject to the weather of our own moods. Clearly, Kierkegaard thought that the darkling sky of his inner life was very much due to his father’s morbidity. But the issue of spiritual health looms up with regard to the way that we relate to our emotional lives. Again, for Kierkegaard, despair is not a feeling, but an attitude, a posture towards ourselves. The man who did not become Caesar, the applicant refused by medical school, all experience profound disappointment. But the spiritual travails only begin when that chagrin consumes the awareness that we are something more than our emotions and projects. Does the depressive identify himself completely with his melancholy? Has the never ending blizzard of inexplicable sad thoughts caused him to give up on himself, and to see his suffering as a kind of fever without significance?
If so, Kierkegaard would bid him to consider a spiritual consultation on his despair, to go along with his trip to the mental health clinic.
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Kierkegaard – I think – dedicated all his life to learn more and to get rid of his despair (depression) philosofically. Little did the poor guy know that mental illness can be cured by the intillect – that it’s a matter of innerwork of the Heart. Much love
You become a psychologist yourself because you want to know what is happening to you.
How do you proceed?
By asking questions and answering them yourself.
With regard to the innerwork of the Heart that is how you then get in touch with your inner child.
You talk with him/her all the time and you get answers you don’t like at times however you can take it because it is a part of you.Interesting how another person saying the same thing might become obsolete yet when you do the work yourself it is okay and it gives you time to reflect.You understand then that Your inner child is there to give you all the encouragement you need and that fuels your soul.Something that another individual possibly would not be able to fulfill because it is very demanding and you could not possibly ask that from somebody else.
Also you know that by doing this work, you are receiving the right answers that you were seeking because your inner child is a part of you and won’t betray you and that is the most important factor.
and you take your cues from places that are going to benefit you…like Paulo and nature.
Thank you
With love
Marie-Christine
Thank you for the article – Interesting!
Kierkegaard dedicated all his life to learn and try to get rid of his despair (depression) thru philosofical terms.
Little did he knew – poor guy – that mental illnesses can’t be solved by the brain, but by innerwork of the Heart. Much love
Thinking about depression, despair and miracles (Paulo’s forum topic last week)… recalled a story that I shared with a friend not long ago.
I’m not Catholic, but as a foster child at age 16, lived with a priest and 3 nuns for a while. At first there were only 2 nuns; Sister Eleanor and Sister Mary. I LOVED THEM. Sister Eleanor was the youngest. She had the patience of a saint and that came in handy with me around.
One day, I decided to help in the kitchen, by running all the dishes through the dishwasher. And there was no dishwasher detergent. So, I used dish soap, then went off to do something else. And that’s how there got to be suds and bubbles blowing all over the kitchen. About 20 minutes later, heard Sister Eleanor laughing and ran to see what was funny. There were tears rolling down her cheeks and she wasn’t even a little cross!!
Sister Mary was the oldest nun and was gentle, but more serious. She had MS (Multiple Sclerosis). Life was a little more difficult for her, so she appreciated us being her legs : )
After a couple of months, Sister Helen arrived, toting an acoustic guitar!!!!!!!! She sang like an angel too, and I would beg her to play. One day, I awoke to her playing and singing ‘rise and shine’ to me, so I jumped out of bed, followed her singing, and we went to awaken Sister Eleanor, then the rest. A Best Day Ever. Then, she taught me the St Francis hymn and then we went to sing it for a ceremony in Church, for some new nuns.
A few months after I was gone and living in another city, the Father came to pick me up to come for a visit. He said ‘just wait until you see’…. got there, and the atmosphere was strange, could sense something was up, but unable to read his emotions well enough to tell if the surprise was a happy, or a sad one. I walked to the family room and saw right away that Sister Mary’s wheelchair ramp was GONE. Oh dear……….
a few minutes later, someone shouted ‘OKAY!!’ and out came Sister Mary, WALKING all by herself. She had gone to Lourdes and was healed. Still a bit wobbly, but not even using a cane.
Much Love to All, Jane : ) xo
Dear Jane,
I really like the story you gave in your post. Yet another example that miracles really do happen!
Thank you for the kind comments you sent me!
God bless you,
Love, Theresa
What an interesting story. I am glad that Sister Mary was cured. A miracle thank God. The religious have something special that helps them get through the tough times. They are cheerful and tough, the real religious are a special manifestation of humanity.
Someone’s comment triggered a recall of the entire issue as I experienced it…
that these ‘kind’ of issues are so DEEP.
I recalled the feeling when growing up.. of being isolated… because most of life around was superficial communication; yet I had and was going through something very .. DEEP.
Social dialogues rarely enter into the deep… and when doing so tred lightly or carefully. It is as if the deep is a forbidden realm for breaching… that rather, we should exist as if superficial: that this would be better and healthier/happier for us all.
Why/How is this so?
I was made to feel so bad, so inadequate when young – just for being … DEEP. ["Try not to be so sensitive" etc]. But this depth never has left me… it still has validity.
;o)
Dear Catherine,
here are some thoughts I wanted to write to you the whole day – I hope they have some meaning to you.
i guess, when we go deep into the ocean, we may forget how wide it is. when we are looking over the ocean we may not remember what is beneath its surface.
so when we go deep, we sometimes feel so lonely as we just don’t see the ones going deep almost next to us… we only see the ones going deep with us.
being deep and telling somebody wide to come down is difficult – he sees the horizon …
being wide is a beauty you like to share with others – especially with those who are deep, but they can not understand in that moment – they have there own beauty.
… being deep very often made me lonely – being lonely made me even deeper … sometimes I find somebody to share, which is a miracle.
… at some point I decided that I don’t want some gifts that came with being deep – for some gifts it worked, which made my life easier, but I regret a little… “perhaps some day…” I think – but for now, I need to integrate (puh… yes, exactly this – I guess I regret a little more ;-) – and still I feel I have a better chance for a new deep and beautyfull experience: being a father… )
I guess we should be able to feel the horizon while going deep – and we should know about the world beneath the ocean when looking at the beauty of the sunset at the horizont…
… only like that we have a chance talking in the same language with others who are deep or wide or both…
… I guess this will be quite a challenge for the next years in my life…
Love,
bernd
It would be a good time to buy if you are paying in cash maybe, but the reality is most of the places that are good buys are impossible to get a loan for because they are not at least 50% owner occupied or have other issues. I just had a measely $60,000 condo under contract only to find out just before closing that it is “unwarrantable” due to it being only about 35% owner occupied. No FHA, No conventional, no nothing. I asked what alternative methods of financing were there. They told me none. The worst part is that it’s a catch 22. Since banks won’t do loans on these condos, that leaves only cash investors who are going to rent them out, thus further reducing the number of owner occupied units while at the same time “ghettoizing” the complexes with rental tenants.
If anybody knows a way for a regular 1st time homebuyer (who just wants to buy a place to live in) to get past this hurdle feel free to email me.
So many words in this article, and after reading, thoughts were swirling around in this brain : )
Like many, I was born sensitive. At age 4, was able to wander past the boundaries of a concrete sidewalk to explore a patch of prairieland, with all of its wonder, mystery and an endless stream of surprises! Feeling the vibrations of the earth,
hearing god through nature’s music, was home, sweet home.
Sometimes, life can change in an instant! I have had this experience a few times with pleasure and pain. But nothing, since age 15 compares. Tragedy struck. We had not long before, moved to another city. There was no prairie to run and scream to and no close friends. Feeling lost, I became disconnected spiritually, wanted to rewind to yesterday when life made some kind of sense; wishing that the world to just ‘stop!’ for a little while (so I could catch my breath) and was unable to speak. A year later, in desperation, god sent my Guardian Angel.
My life began to improve, slow but sure.
Getting back up to live again became the most important thing. I decided to volunteer spare time to other kids the same age who were also in need of a friend. Reaching out to give, to see the other kids smile and feel better, also made me smile without even thinking about it! Joy returned. Feeling the despair of being ‘lost at sea without a paddle’, ended.
Years later, I am still just as sensitive. To exhale the energy of sad feelings, I do something physical like chores or walking (being outdoors in nature). Balance is important! Not everyone prays or even does so the same way, but, is something I love to do every day…then go on to live out this day as a prayer in motion (action).
I love to to learn some, play some, give some and relax some, every day. Then just before closing the eyes to fall asleep, ask ‘did I give this day my best?’
No matter how bleak the clouds appear, right above them, that sun is shining just as brightly as can be.
I am not an expert in anything, but I do believe in the power of Love.
And a heart FULL of Love to All, Jane : ) xo
Thanks Jane –
I have to admit, hearing you went through something similar at age 15 gives hope that there is a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ ;o) x
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e2NTYmAgBw
The Sea inside.
A wonderful film about the … body, Psyche and spirit.
LOVE,
Thelma xxx
Thanks a lot for this article Mr. Coelho, its what i need it to read right now, i’ve been on this journey to self recovery and alone with your books i know i’ll get there…god bless you, thanks for the light that your books bring to my life…
I agree with the point made by Kruchenik in his/her comment 6.53 GMT. I quote ” In my opinion the essence of depression and despair is an unwillingness to live.”
I think it is part of our human nature to try to escape from difficult situations. Whenever I feel depressed with my circumstances in life, I try to take my inspiration from those who have chosen to LIVE, in spite of all the odds. One of my heroes is Professor Stephen W. Hawking who has been severely disabled by Motor Neuron Disease for many years. http://www.hawking.org.uk
Many people in similar circumstances would try to escape and even seek assisted suicide. I admire him so much because he refuses to give in to self-pity or despair and does everything he can to follow his dreams!
” All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.” Helen Keller
I respect what you believe in. However, as a 4 year old child who touched despair for the first time, I do not think that it was in an unwillingness to live … During all my battle to overcome depression and despair, it is the willing to live that helped me go through. Maybe there are many essences that compose the depression and despair. Cordially, Jojo.
Thank you deaar Theresa, for reminding us Stephen w. Hawking. He is a bright star and a paradigm for everyone.
Dear Jojo, I am so sad to hear about children feeling unloved and in despair..
Sometimes things seem inexplicable in our minds. There is the time for faith. We all face the fear and mystery of death. Then whenever I hear of people committing suicide, I try to understand and imagine in what situation and darkness a soul must be.. Some maybe are under the power of drugs and narcotics, some cannot face a .. hopeless future, some may not be able to ‘think’ of a way out.. There a specialists hand is needed; faith, love and understanding and miracles do happen. Life and Destiny is a mystery.
LOVE,
Thelma xxx
Thank you Mr Coelho for this article, nothing help better that diving right into the heart of the wise philosophers!
Another interesting subject to reflect on, and by doing just that may open some eyes and mind to the true path of finding peace within ourselves.
Wanting to be somebody else, and getting rid of my-self, has been a strange goal of mine and I guess still is since I cannot live up to Nietzsche’s “Become who you are!” advice…The problem remains that it is always “easier” to give up to fear of simply ourselves because social, family, peer pressure, always want more from us.
Despair comes from the lack of acceptance to be just yourself and in the process the impossibility to realise that we can be just as unique and precious as any other rich, famous or adored individuals! What are we really looking for: being loved, accepted, recognised and respected.Fear (or fears) can prevent us from reaching that goal) fear not to be accepted for who we are, fear to realise our true potential or to realise our dream.
Te question is how do you escape despair? Maybe just learning how to know yourself and love yourself.Unfortunately this is sometimes a very hard task for most of us, I know it is a hard task for me.
I hope for all that come and read this article to find a little light to shine on the path toward a better life and the achievement of the true goal: living our lives as a gift and not a burden.
Dear Paolo,
Thank you very much for sharing. I have put this link on my notes so that other people can see clearly, just like me.
Só para lhe dizer que o estimo demais.
Beijos from Dublin
Унылая пора!Очей очарованье.Приятна мне твоя прощальная краса.Люблю я пышное природы увяданье..(А.Пушкин)
In my understand Kierkegaard is despair himself. He said and defined everything under his hopeless perspective. Knowing his self limitation, he gives arguments and definitions very contradictive. .
Kierkegaard said despair is not a feeling is an attitude. He also said “Happiness is the greatest hiding place of despair”, happiness is a state of mind or feeling. That means he classified despair as a feeling, then “Sadness is the lowest visible place of despair”.
Everyone have feelings that are a fact. Everyone have to be classified some degree of Happiness to Sadness. Then “Everyone is despair.”
If that is true despair is a feeling not an attitude.
In other of his definitions said” Despair, is a lack of awareness of being a self or spirit”, Is this a feeling or attitude?
Note: Attitude: “a complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings and values and dispositions to act in certain ways”
Then despair is an attitude.
After all is not clear is despair is a feeling or attitude.
He definitely was “the fork’, because he practice the false idea if I show people’s weaknesses, my own weaknesses will be invisibles. He was so aware of his despair that dedicates to study with the intension of justify himself. Does he needs the approved for someone ?
Why for him was so important to define despair as attitude and not as o feeling? Perhaps to solve their problem of existentialism.
My comments very limited because I know nothing of this authors, but it’s always good to try to learn.
Thanks
wow!!! how deep. Highly enjoyable. My cousin in Mexico was having depression issues and went through a series of “energetizations”, she went to the pyramids in Mexico City to get cleansed and other things she’s been trying along with “professional” help from a psychiatrist and has been able to come out from her estate of mind.
I on the other hand, used to love watching a “ghost” program on TV, which has gotten rather dark. One day I watched for 5 minutes and it was about a lady that was being harrassed by an entity and she was manifesting in depression. Well, even after this short period of time, I got so depressed I was in dispair. I inherited this profound faith from my mother, and have been to re-treats; I thought this was not normal and finally I prayed in our Patio (Lots of light, during the day) for God to aleviate my sould. Sure enough the heavyness was lifted and the depression was gone.
We no longer have TV. We have internet at home, but we limit the sites that we visit. My children are too young to be able to protect themselves from these attacks.
When there is a meaning, a deep sense of life, when there are no coincidences and everything has a profund significance of love… then any mood storm will move the spirit. They are just winds. After they are gone, the real self will come to light.
Thank you Paulo!
Love,
Lilly
Thank you for the article, very interesting. There was an impression that Kierkegaard has not understood what to do with despair that he felt himself. In his spiritual searches there is an aspiration to realise the essence of his individuality and to operate the spiritual and emotional state of mind. I was surprised with basic division of concepts of depression and despair. Personally it seems to me that this concepts are close. Depression is the long burdensome state of mind connected with difficult circumstances of a life which the person doesn’t accept, which bring him sufferings (for example illness of the father). The despair is an extreme degree of depression, frustration when dreams and hopes are destroyed. In my opinion the essence of depression and despair is an unwillingness to live. Certainly, people always try to struggle with it, they just want to live. At various times people struggled differently – through religion (refusal from sadness as from a sin, with a great effort will and a prayer), and now through psychologists and different popular spiritual currents. The person simply wishes to be happy, to get rid of sufferings. I agree with Kierkegaard that if the dream has not come true, execution of this dream doesn’t open nature of person, he needs something another, something only for him. This idea inspires. It is difficult for the person to understand in what his true calling, his mission. The dream can come from outside and not connected at all with mission of the person. I wish to believe that broken dreams are steps to self-actualization and nevertheless to happiness. Also I consider that philosophical reflexions in this case is a psychotherapy variant too, the person takes a detached view of the life, tries to understand sense of events occurring to him. Here I write to you and it feels better)))
“I was reminded of a sentence in chassidic literature:
´In each of us there is something precious that exists
in no other.`This sounds thrashy in a capitalistic society
which has to concentrate on our equality in monetary manpower.
But in friendship and love we feel the truth of this sentence.
Martin Buber remarked on this: `That which is precious in a person
he can discover only when he truly realizes his strongest feeling, his central wish that which is within him, which moves his core.”
Michael Lukas Moeller
It is interesting how Kierkegaard used to write under pseudonyms. I like that, he obviously could put himself in other peoples’ shoes. on the couch.
Jessica, I was just thinking of you, I have missed you…. glad to see you here.
Love
Pandora
Welcome back, dear Jessica. We have missed you.
LOVE,
Thelma xxx
“A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.” Despair occurs when there is an imbalance in this synthesis. From there Kierkegaard goes on to present a veritable portrait…”
The language of the article is a bit difficult and has … confused me. The ideas are not clearly stated. The sentences above are, I think the essence of it. The synthesis of our eternal and temporal qualities that forms us and our inability to have BALANCE between the two is the cause or our ‘depression and despair’. We are Eternal Spirits in .. temporal, decaying and mortal bodies. We are the .. shadows [Plato's cave] that are ‘chained’ into the material world. We are the … butterflies into the .. cocoon. We have glimpses of the Truth, under Isis’s veil, in our dreams or in Ecstasy. It is said that once someone has ‘seen’ reality even for a second, his whole life is seen under another prism and the ‘know thyself’ offers him enlightenment and sets him FREE. The butterfly’s flight. Butterfly in Greek is the Psyche= ΨΥΧΗ
‘Know the Truth and the Truth will set you FREE’.
LOVE,
Thelma xxx
In fact you are right Thelma. The article is a bit difficult to understand, because it is full of philosophical words. I had to read it more than once for to understand its meaning. It becomes even harder when that it is not your mother language.
Philosophy is all word plays, it is its nature. But I think that it might help if we would have some more information about Kierkegaard’s philosophy. Especially on this issue.
I for example have lot of trouble on understanding this statement :
“A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation relating itself to itself in the relation.”
The word relation is giving me troubles. In some cases I can’t seize its real meaning.
Estimado Thelma hermoso todo lo que usted hizo.
Two very powerful paintings – „Despair” and „The Scream” (by Edward Munch):
http://www.vivilibros.com/excesos/07-em.jpg
http://dreamstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/thescream.jpg
“According to Mark C. Taylor, professor of humanities at Williams College, Munch’s painting The Scream is a visual representation of the emotional core in Kierkegaard’s work. Though the painting was finished before Munch read Kierkegaard, Munch later affirmed that he found “remarkable parallels” between himself and the philosopher…”
Thank you Asote for the powerful paintings. The Scream was always in my mind..
LOVE.
Thelma xxx
Thanks for showing this article.. very useful in our world where we have forgot ourselfs…
This is a provocative article, and the ideas of limitation vs. infinitude clarify ideas I’ve been having for a while.. There’s a wonderful book on this subject from a Jungian perspective called “The Blue Lady,” about Melancholy– and one of the things it champions is what this article is gesturing towards… despair has a dimension which is quite spiritual, and is often a problem of being too deeply aware of the more difficult aspects of life (leaning toward infinitude) or being too little aware of them (becoming a very small and limited person). The book, though, unlike Kierkegaard to some degree, stresses that despair is a natural response to the reality we’re faced with, and as such should be treated respectfully, not just as a wound to be healed.
I am not anti-medication, because suffering is so personal and intense that it is not my place to tell anyone what to do. I think it is definitely appropriate in certain situations, which is my stance on drugs in general. I do know that I feel that depressed people should not be coerced into believing that there is something “wrong” with them that must be “fixed” with medicine. These problems, of being too aware and too little, are problems of reality, not always just a “chemical imbalance” as people are fond of saying (though I’m convinced that it is so, for some people).
An idol of mine, Nick Cave, wrote a gorgeous lecture on love songs which deals with sorrow. Here’s what he said about it, an interesting correlation to the ideas found here:
“The loss of my father, I found, created in my life a vacuum, a space in which my words began to float and collect and find their purpose. The great W.H. Auden said “The so-called traumatic experience is not an accident, but the opportunity for which the child has been patiently waiting – had it not occurred, it would have found another- in order that its life come a serious matter.” The death of my father was the “traumatic experience” Auden talks about that left the hole for God to fill. How beautiful the notion that we create our own personal catastrophes and that it is the creative forces within us that are instrumental in doing this. We each have a need to create and sorrow is a creative act. The love song is a sad song, it is the sound of sorrow itself. We all experience within us what the Portugese call Suadade, which translates as an inexplicable sense of longing, an unnamed and enigmatic yearning of the soul and it is this feeling that lives in the realms of imagination and inspiration and is the breeding ground for the sad song, for the Love song is the light of God, deep down, blasting through our wounds.”
Beautifully put, dear Syna, thank you.
LOVE,
Thelma xxx
“for the Love song is the light of God, deep down, blasting through our wounds.:
So delicately put.
I feel like a Fado
Amalia Rodrigues Solidao
http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke2F9vwpOCA&feature=related
suar frio
I see the soul* in people by being myself.
*that which is whole.
“These days, confide to someone that you are in despair and he or she will likely suggest that you seek out professional help for your depression.”
How very true. I used to live in a community where I thought people were nosey. But when I moved to this new country, where the above attitude was norm, I began to miss the “nosey-ness” of my old community. People then cared and helped. Here, not even the people I thought were friends would offer a listening ear; they’d rather leave it to the professionals.
The article also brings to mind when people say “You don’t look yourself” when they see you down, or looking in despair. Really explains the phrase to me now.
I think the words the article should be saying is that today’s society shuns weakness.
Thanks Paulo for sharing. This is a reminder for me to reflect on my self.
Medication is definitely a bad thing for persons to use. Both despression and dispair is a state that is caused by a situation of total uncertainty but also because the person can not understand life and his role in it. Medicine cannot help the person to go out and look, search or investigate that. A person that wants to know more and that asks questions about how and why, is seen as depressed. Other people can live without the answers to those questions. The most important thing that a person can realize is that everyone is special. And sometimes a period of distress, lead to some realization or an answer that is very important in ones life path. Complete happiness is not possible i think. But the way you view yourself and the world in wich you live can help you see the times of depression and dispair as something fruitful. I read in wikipedia about Paulo Coelho and it said that famous brasilian writers claimed that Paulo had a poor vocabulary. When I begun reading Veronica decides to die, I felt the same. Maybe it was because I expected a writer to be complicated, especially because I heard Paulo was so great. But as I read on, I realized that it was a great book with a great message that nobody would miss out. Nobody could have done it better. When I later read The Zahir, I thought about the form of the book and I realized that Paulo really knows how to do it – how to get it right. I later wondered how can he in this simple way – and my answer was that he had worked with theather and that helps him even better write a narrative plot. The persons that say that Paulo does not know how to write, do not comprehend that behind the book, there is a very intelligent person that really knows how to put everything just right and really get to the reader. Definitely Paulo knows about emotional life. He knows hot to create a kind of tention and later to release it. He knows what should come first and what should come later. And I liked the idea about being conscious about death. People make things in this world as they would live forever, and do not understand that we have to live a rich life in order to go away and feel content with outselves, that we made a diffrence in the world, that we made the world better and that we learned enough and found the answers we are looking for. I don’t know how to explain it better. People search for power and stop growing as humans, as they would keep that power forever. How will they meed their death when they are suddenly vulnerable and realize they lived in vain? I red some of your short stories and some of them were things me myself thought about or said in another form.
Thanks a lot for this article Mr. Coelho, its what i need it to read right now, i’ve been on this journey to self recovery and alone with your books i know i’ll get there…god bless you, thanks for the light that your books bring to my life…
I’m not sure I got everything right, but I have to agree with one of the commenters on facebook as well….,so depression is the denying of Self.
They call depression nowadays a worldwide epidemic..I think there are a several factors why so many feel they are at sea, and dont know the way out of a seemingly unsolvable situation.And that is: denying theirSelves. And yes,the lack of balance and harmony is to be blamed. Too many of us believe (or are forced to believe) in things that deep inside dont belong to us… We are influenced in so many ways (mainstream media..) we dont even realize. And when something goes wrong,when we realize that we were playing a part,acting according to “rules” we immediately feel out of place,that we’ve lost ground and fall into depression…
Basicly,people are just afraid to be themselves.They do everything they can (even if its unconscious) to disguise their real Selves.Everywhere I turn I see desperate and numb people.It just makes me so sad.
But that is why I deeply appreciate you books, Paulo:they help people,and have helped me overcome fears and believe in myself…
As a past sufferer of depression/despair my experience was tied to the pain of loss. For nine years I mourned my mother internally – something that was tearing my conscious will away from my soul. I lacked the ability to cope and only knew suffering. I was cast afloat in a deep ocean with no means to drown fully nor did I have the strength to hold on to any lifeline that was there to pull me out. Those were my deepest, darkest days sunken into a vortex of emotion. A simple loving suggestion from my wife “Just let go” was the diamond that finally cracked open the shell of my pained existence – I replayed those words spoken in my wife’s loving voice in my head till the light began to return. In those days I explored the mystery of death and dying and was reading the Tibetan book of Living and Dying – I finally accepted reality again. Reality then hit back since I was ready. On 9/11 the day that we were all tested I was reminded of who I was and where my priorities lay – to my family and not do despair. I walked several miles from lower Manhattan to reach my wife and gather my children from school. I took action rather than fall prey to my emotions – I had been cured.
A veces quiero escapar de mi Misma, no sé si por cobarde o por haber caido en ese estado de desesperación. En ese conflicto de mi alma y mi cuerpo entre el deber ser y el querer hacer, entre la razón y el corazón, entre el sueño y la realidad y me pregunto ¿A dónde y Cuando voy?. Y me hundo entre mi locura y desesperación de querer ser mas de lo que soy.
Un gran saludo mi querido escritor, de un corazón que sueña con hundirse en este mágico y maravilloso mundo de las letras y la escritura.
Thank you, Paulo, for bringing this article to the attention of a wider public.
I suspect we are not told about Kierkegaard in a context of mental health because many would recognize that they should examine what drives them to despair, rather than try to push it further into the realm of the unconscious using drugs. But then, those who push and sell us those drugs have no desire to see us turn away from them and get strong by ourselves. They would rather we consume their wares, be they illegal or quite openly prescribed as “medicines”…
I think describing feelings with many words, trying to put definitions to things already named as depression, blue, despair, sadness, stress disorder, is only a point of view. More, defining self, but soul???
Who can really say for sure what is “soul”, clearly, without any uncertainty? I am so sorry, but I dont see all that as a explanation, and I think not even nowaday the many doctors who pretend to cure, or to undertand well mental disease, or dispair, they do not know much about what is really happening inside the mind or soul of another person, why, and what makes the difference of a happy or sad state. Unfortunately.
Love
Alexandra
Despair
mine, your, ours.
Is it not all the same?
Stop, sit, sip, share.
Why are we so afraid to share what
is within?
Why are we so afraid to share and be
All that we are?
Let me find peace in release.
Even if it means I am sharing with only
my “self”; all that I am and all that
I am meant to be.
And I don’t mean “act as if” I mean
“be”.
Thank You Paolo for being a “Peaceful Warrior”
know that many of us are listening.
Chego a sentir certo orgulho em ler as respostas acima, eu sentia certa responsabilidade por considerar que os escritos dele, de Kierkegaard, levasse ao desespero, mas, nesse caso, essa interpretação é favorável. Pode-me ser útil essa interpretação, me deixou reflexiva o resto do dia ontem. Vou acompanhar caso tenha novos comentários.
Mas, adoraria fazer com que ele próprio tivesse essa percepção, da escolha e da aceitação de si mesmo, e não carregasse pela eternidade esse desespero.
Vou cuidar disso!
Thanks for sharing that article. Loved to read it. And that brought me to let myself go and share my intimacy in relation to depression and despair.
My path until today consisted of that battle … seeking for a sense in relation to my being here, of not being able to capture the mystery of the gift of life. My grand-mother was depressive (but must say that loosing her child at 4 years old contributed). My mother, who was told to respect the limits imposed to her as a woman (spouse and mother), and who “lost” her mother at her sister’s death, was “depressive” at the time that I was carried and born. I truly believe that I sensed that energy, that something was “depressing”, that “despair” was present. It took me many years to understand that, for most of my child, adolescent and woman phases of life thought that I was the reason for that, and my actions, decisions, thinking was linked to that sensitive impression, to which I could not put words or have a coherent thinking for I was so little when I lived that “despair moment”.
Thoughts of not being important for my mother, of not being a source of joy to her, of being the cause of her despair and depression, brought me to maintain that negative energy and my addictions to drugs as a young and to alcohol older were ways to cut me from touching the suffering of not being important, loved, secured , of that aura of culpability … since all that surrounded me in my family and all that was said I took “uncounciously” to nourish and emphasize the no power feeling, the no sense of life for me, of feeling guilty to live when I was the reason for my mother’s abandonment and despair … not even aware that I was for so many ways in a projection mode and that all that I did to make her happy to live were efforts to put the joy of living in me.
When I stopped drugs and alcohol, I came back to deal with the real things … myself again and all that was contained in me … despair. I underwent therapies, went to AA meetings, went to University to comprehend my obsessive compulsive mode of destruction, conferences, books, put in action, passed over fears to follow a dream that I decided to render real, of having the right to live … my rational mind changed, my beliefs changed, my vision changed … but despair came now and then to remind me … but why to I put all that energy if death is the end of all … despair
As I continued to work on balancing, as I became more and more conscious of how I functioned as a human in relation, of the why I reacted in a way, or thought in a way, on working on my psyche, all those voyages brought me to put light on the dark and to discover that even after all that work, I was still “surviving” and not “living”. I discovered that all depended on succeeding in accomplishing my dream, that the day that I attained my objectives I would then “live” … and that smashed me … despair …
And then I understood that living was now. A more enlarged conscience came. I realized that it did not have to obtain success with my dream in a material sense, that living did not go with realizing myself on this Earth in a material sense, that it was something deeper, something that pertained to receiving the gift of life with gratitude and being here and now, that the key was there, that it was linked to something else … to accept the present moment with who I am now, and that conducted me make me aware with more precision of the spiritual aspect of me that I possessed since childhood. I started since that moment to sense a peace that I longed to sensed, I sensed joy that I longed to sense, I sensed that I had found “essential”. I had a vision at that moment … I was at my desk, full of papers, a phone, no more money to try to let myself know with my work and mission, my agenda with no clients and looking at that nice place where I can receive people who have the courage to ask help to stop suffering … I then sensed anguish, panic … then a battery appeared. I was like “is it really a battery?” and he went to size 100%. Yes it was a battery. I asked … why do you come here on my desk in relation to what I am living here and now? The vision said : Because you need me. And why should I need you? What are you? I am the battery of life. And what a battery of life can do with my problem, with the realization of my dream? Because you are facing death.” And I understood … Here I was still in a despair mode, a survival mode, that I was linking success of my dream to achieving the right to live.
Now, in what I would call my depression period, what brought me there were thoughts, feelings, interpretations where I had not the right to live and all that was done was in a way to confirm that feeling of not being valuable. So, I was on a destructive mode of living, in survival against my biggest enemy … myself, and trying to stay “over” despair. When I decided (rational mind) that I had the right as any other human to live, I went to change those thoughts, those beliefs, interpretations, found the sources that brought me there. Day by day I walked that path to attain my objective: Touch at least one moment the joy of living. Each time that I went from dark to light, I realized that not long after I was always dealing with that feeling … despair … and I then went to meditate, pray, put a spiritual phrase that would calm the despair (better than a drink for me) … until the last straw, my mother’s death, where I faced again my fundamental question of 4years old: Why all this if death is at the end? My fear of death that brought my fear of living and the depression episodes in my life. Despair … When the battery appeared, I decided to let myself touch the despair, since now I had nothing more to grasp to stay over it. I stopped the resistance and face the truth inside me … the fear of dying and the fear of living.
In that non resistance mode, a thing became suddenly clear for me in my spirituality. Now, during all that process from 1987 until today, I relied on faith to help me, on a God as I see it, on prayers, calls for help, holding myself to all those beautiful phrases and signs (that I held on to and let me tell you that I could find signs everywhere when I was in despair … seeing more the signs than the despair), and discovered that I was using faith not to not touch despair, to have the courage to go on in that psyche voyage of mine, to find energy to maintain what I thought was life but was in fact again and always survival. I discovered that I needed to accept my incarnation, which means the cycle of life and death. And now, my faith has also changed. I was wondering why I was attracting masters, gourous, that I was even at a time in a sect … when I saw or heard something spiritual that could lift me up over the despair, I would jump in it without listening to the signs that wanted to protect me, asking me to be vigilant. Today, I am at the point of comprehending that I have it all inside me, that I am spiritual and that inside me are the Master and the Disiciple. Something happened … I have no words to describe the experience but that experience is mine and is deep. Not enough pages to name all the comprehension that came all of the sudden about “my psyche”, etc …
So, did the egg came before the chicken or the chicken before the egg … for me did despair come before depression or depression before despair … for me, one is with the other. Psyche and Spiritual are together in that incarnation. Psyche is part of the human that is part spiritual, and spiritual is part of the human that is part psyche. My liberty and my creativity, my unicity came from working on the couch, from non stop introspection to discover the true me, my centre, my essential and now still in introspection, still putting myself on a couch with other means, I am now exploring that profoundness and richness that I realized were all inside me and not at the exterior of me. Seems that that was my “karma” …
Cordially and in so much grateful for my true Creator that never let me down and helped me on my road to just touch the profound joy of being and living … Now, I truly understand the meaning of “Act but act with easiness”, “One day at a time”, “Listen to learn”, “Live and let live”, “Think, Meditate, Pray”, “Accept with serenity what is, Have the courage to change what can be changed with wisedom” … “Acceptance of the laws of the Holy Autority”. No wonder I was always rebelled to autorities and laws … I had difficulty to accept the law of Life … it made me contact who I was really …
Still on the journey … but no more in a despair mode (survival) … well, for today J
With affection, Jojo.
HI jojo !1
a long take on this, not bad !! all these students of human mind and spirit should take a lesson, should begin there journey with a prayer, find some moorings in religion before they set out to battle depression and despair.
by the way whether chicken came first or egg has a very scientific explaination, and there is a clear definite answer to this question which is ;-))))), i will telll u some other time.
love
aditya
In the great majority of times, medicine will not solve our soul problems. Help cames form looking to ourselves, reading good articles, listening good music. Nowadays life is so busy that we don’t have time to feed our soul. It’s not easy for a person in depression to see the situation with the eyes of a third pearson. But sometimes we need to put ourselves out of the facts to try to find not only a solution, but to find ourselves in the caos of our thoughts. Paulo Keep in the LIGHT! Love from BRAZIL – Cuiabá-MT!!!
interesting article, thank you very much for sharing, now i know how to handle the enemy.
Nada ocorre por acaso. Acredito que mesmo que estejamos desesperados, ou deprimidos, o universo conspira para que encontremos forças para tentarmos sair de uma inércia mental. Conversas, literatura, blogs e ultimamente o Twitter tem sido instrumentos viáveis para se buscar autoconhecimento e ajuda. No entanto, há que se desmistificar o preconceito que ainda existe acerca especialmente da depressão, pois às vezes nos parece que o desespero é mais tolerado. Creio que ninguém, conscientemente, quer o mal ( e aqui tb cabe se sentir mal) para si. Obrigada pelas matérias edificantes, continue nos avisando no twitter. Abraços do Centro Oeste do Brasil! Cuiabá-MT!
Inspirational reading! Thank you. I haven’t thought about Kierkegaard in years. I always liked his writing. Is the pessimistic message of this article valid? Isn’t this exactly what we do in this blog. Communicate to help each other with our individual despair, to help each other to see the light and to surround our self with colorful dancing clouds. Guess I’m more optimistic about the progress.
optimism helps one move on, take one more step !
love
aditya
It is strange that in the last thirty years at least, that western society has become a place where a distressed individual is more likely to be sent to a counsellor than for that person to be granted individual attention by his/her family. That to me is far too externalising of the issue..
I also have reverted back to using pen and paper to write.. where possible. The ease of twitter IS good, yet at the same time this does not always allow me to write about deeper issues…. There is always that “putting on a brave face, cheery front” guilt trip persuading one to refrain.
I recall the time where I discovered I was clinically depressed. And yes, I was referred…
yet in myself I KNEW that what was of key issue was not something that I could unravel and have nicely placed into conceptual packages by a counsellor.
Family members told me to get a job…. that it would help. Yes.. it would.. but that was not the answer.
For in my depression despair HAD played a part… and a seperate one at that.
It is difficult to explain… but the article breaches the subject well. The spirit can be healthy, whilst the pysche unwell. So often, they are treated as combined… thus undermining the capability of the individual to respond in an empowered manner. The society itself creates a world where the pysche lives according to chaos, anxiety etc.. no wonder one becomes/feels frantic. And there is no pure recognition of the strength of spirit outside of the captured pysche.
No wonder there is despair.. it is like being suffocated!
But i have generalised, yes, here… and part of why counselling works so well is that they do cover the details in a patient’s narrative… something which family is, less and less, able to afford the time to spare in its healing programme for a family member.
Time constraints mean we economise on paying attention to what is attended to. People frantically react by flight or fright… rather than respond with common sense! Popularised culture feels more like competition for light… and survival; rather than humanity celebrating honestly.
It is almost as if society is rushing along and ending up in a trap.. one in whcih it is too late to turn around and leave from.. In order to follow one’s own life in a self-determined, considered way.
I became depressed and this has lingered with despair.. because the future can be bleak.. in that lessons don’t seem to be learnt at the group level. Depression for me is an individual experience.. with only real consequence for my family members. But this despair is in the mentality of the three generations of these times… who are living almost blindly and ignorantly, arrogantly and selfishly.
How have we become so foolishly brainwashed!!??!
……………………………..
ps. here are a couple of terms that i heard of towards the END of my panic phase of depression. Just before being offered CBT 5 years into my diagnosis… a doctor told me about stress and that this alone can even cause the feelings of detachment, despair etc..
how? depersonalisation [feeling seperated from one's thoughts and actions in feeling] and derealisation [feeling seperated and detached from one's environment...].
These two concepts saved me from a tunnel of despair.. two simple concepts that slipped out of the doctors mouth and I questioned…
the result? no more thinking i was feeling crazy.. i had an answer… i was not a spirit of the devil after all… I just had a pysche very very stressed.
Boy.
;o) x
[pps. sorry for the rant ;o/
I must agree. We as a society, have turned off our spiritual connection with other human beings. Everything is commercialized in an attempt to make you “happy” truth is that as I write this, I am having a disconnected discussion with 3 other people who have left their comments prior. They are not here, I do not see their faces, I do not feel their candor. All I see are words floating on my screen. I have not slept due to a society that forces upon us a need to accumulate material wealth to “retire happily.” Then, when the time comes, we are too sick, too tired, or too poor to pursue this imagined “retirement.” What we need to do is reconnect with one another. Not over wireless signals. Not under the shroud of anonymity of the internet. But through holding hands, hugging your parents, complimenting a stranger, by having MEANINGFUL connections with other human beings, and also with nature. Don’t put a wallpaper of a waterfall on your computer, see it, live it, bathe in it in its own habitat. Go to the mountain, don’t wait for the mountain to come to you.
My deepest wishes for all who read this to find true happiness,
Mikel
Paulo you are excellente” look forward to your twiitters this blog is awesome..
I agree that the despair is different of the depression, but the spirit and phyche, I am not sure. Nobody proved yet that the spirit and the psyche are two distinct things. I truly believe that spirit and psyche is the same thing, the self inner. But this is a passionate and an endless discussion.
“For example, when the ambitious man whose slogan is “Either Caesar or nothing” does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it … precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he cannot bear to be himself. ”
When ihad read yours books Paulo for the first time, i thought that i can become who i want! Later i Got down on earth, and i realise that i was runing after something wrong. It was very hard for me, but it was the reality. Now i try to be myself, and try to doing in my best, to build something good, and do it better end better every days. But i never stop dreaming…
Nulla cambia veramente nel rapporto tra uomo-donna-creato-sentimenti-pensieri.solo accessori,solo accessori ai quali tristemente diamo troppa importanza.
saluti mrc
We have to move with the ages.. And have to find ourselves in the present, our inner peace and spirituality. If it means something. Twitter helped me to follow Mr. Coelho and wider my mind day by day. I think we just have to find the balance.
That is a really interesting article.I guess we are all “desperate” in a way and I agree that prozac and medecines are not the answer to that.
Well well now it is all clear to me.
heheheheheheheh!!!….. I really must have been very sic at that time then. :PPP
Depression + Despair. I knew about the first one but not about the second one.
All the symptoms I had, and know I see. It is just that I don’t dear accepting to myself that despair must have been accompanying me for a very long time. That is why I feel so differently right now. And I only hope to never get back to that again (this way I found an explanation even for my nightmares of this two last months).
Thank you Paulo. Once again you helped me out.
Now that I know the name of my enemy, I believe it is going to be easier avoiding it.
Avoid, or deal with it/solve it?
…
DO YOU OLTA, NEED MY PSYCHIATRIST NUMBER???? kiss :P
I meant keeping it away. I’ve already solved with it, and I’ve been through a beautiful period, wonderful times. I’ve changed a lot. It is just that sometimes I worry that I might fall into despair again, that’s why I mentioned nightmares. Sometimes I use to make the same mistakes more than once till I learn.
I want to learn how to keep my light lighted always, and make it grow.
Dear Olta Ana,
Perhaps if you read if from the “surface” but without much thought it might make more sense. I might have had a different understanding of the article. I imagine this happens to everybody. For instance when I went on retreat we all (retreatans and team) had different spiritual experiences, and we all experienced God in a different way. The same way reading an article might have different meanings to different people. No Wrong no right.
Regards
Dear Olta Ana,
The power of prayer is a good place to start, pray for guidance and strenght. May you recieve wonderful blessings and continue growing stronger and stronger
Thank you for your words Monika!
Yes you are so wright. It is just that sometimes little things like this one get underestimated. This is why we need people around to help us remember even about such things.
thank you again and may God bless you too!
I\m really sorry him :)
<3 You’ll never stop, will you? :P <3
Dear Johanne,
Thank you for your reply. I am not a psychologist/psychiatrist so I am not qualified to give a professional opinion, but I will just follow up with a few of my own ideas about your comments.
I often read your interesting posts describing your past and present situations. Many, like you, have had some type of depression or feelings of despair during their lifetime, depending on their particular circumstances. Many survive the ordeal and come through a better person. However, some people from all age groups don’t manage to pull through, and take their own lives by one way or another. This is truly regrettable!
In my post, I was referring specifically to the feelings of despair suffered by people with progressive, incapacitating diseases such as ALS, MS, etc., one of which I happen to suffer from myself. Believe me, it is a frightening experience knowing that within a certain period of time, one will be incapable of taking care of oneself! Many will not be able to get the help and care needed when the time comes. With no hope for the future, despair sets in and they seek an assisted suicide which is still illegal in my country of origin (UK) Many people travel abroad to countries where it is permitted and choose to end their lives in a private facility.
For myself, I am in the early stages, but I know I would never take my own life. I trust that God will be at my side as he always has been, and will bring me safely through.
Take care,
Theresa
Thank you, Johanne, for your kind comments. You are right, we all have our own personal journey. May God bless your journey and bring you peace and joy. Theresa
Dear Theresa, I admire your courage and trust in god is inspiring. Much Love and prayers, Jane : ) xo
Theresa, I understood clearly that your comment related to a matter pertaining to physical, and this is why I wrote that I respected and that way understood your view. That brought me to the point that depression and despair is to be seen from a personal point of view, related to individual life and personal burdens to go through. I am truly touched by what you are going through and admire you. Like I say to many, we arrive alone and depart alone and in between have a personal journey, our personal road and on that road we have relations to help us understand, heal, etc in order to be who we are totally and freely … With affection, Jojo.
u have highlighted a good point, i too read somewhere sometime ago that amongst professionals, the highest suicide rate is amongst psychiatrists ! surprising but not really, trying to understand self, spirit, trying ot be spiritual without being religious is ……dangerous, it can lead to depression and suicide !
love
aditya
Thank you Thelma. I have known and heard of many in my environment who took their lifes … under the power of despair and the effect of the depression symptoms. I held groups for those persons and transmit what helped me go through. You know, the beauty of it all is realizing that what before was dark becomes a light for others, that I have richness to share to those who have a similar experience. Love, Jojo.
I understand your point dear Monica, but I just can’t feel ok if I just take it from the surface. I could never find peace like that. It is my nature. Especially when it is a matter of philosophy, physiology, etc. I just love them. Anyway, if there is one thing that I’ve learned about philosophy is that the person who gives his statements, mean just only thing, just one, even though it might be interpreted in many ways.
I can give as example the BIBLE. I don’t know which is your religion, but I am christian and I can see everyday the different ways it is interpreted by different peoples. Once a teacher of mine sad :
Every time that I read the same statements in the BIBLE I find new meanings that I’ve never noticed before. And she was relating that to her own life experience, since she is old enough. I know that till the day she’ll die, she’s gonna find something new on those words. Now the BIBLE maybe an example a bit too BIG, but still there is a lot of philosophy in it, and since each word in there is very meaningful, we might get lost into their meanings.
Nor I can pretend to be that wise as to seize that easily the main meaning of those statements, but I just know that I want to very hard.
As a student for translation, I’ve learned that for being able to give a correct interpretation or translation of the author’s words I must be able to “be inside of his own skin”, so I’ll bring his message, and not his words, as correctly as possible. But if can’t understand his words aether…
I just want to be under Kiekegaard’s skin so I’ll know what he meant.
Anyway thank you Monika for your reply.
Sorry for who? :P <3 <3 <3
Thank you Bernd for your thoughts and reply.. and you are absolutely right.. in everything you say!
I’m glad you have decided to become a fish for a while.. I am sure it will be fun… with a child… for playing !
Best wishes and warm regards,
Catherine ;o)
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