Dear Jeyamohan,
I was a depressed person for more than six years during my youth. Looking back now, I can understand what had happened to me much more clearly.
At that age, I had enormous dreams about myself. I imagined that I would become an important person, perhaps even an epic-maker of my generation. I lived largely in those dreams. I imagined what I would accomplish, what kind of person I would become, and how significant my life would be. But there was one serious problem: I was not doing anything to make those dreams real.
I did not practise anything regularly. I did not develop any particular skill. I did not do anything useful or meaningful every day. I was living in my imagination rather than in reality. Naturally, I had no real talent because talent, I gradually understood, is not something we merely imagine within ourselves. It has to be developed through continuous work and practice.
Whenever I tried to accomplish something, I failed badly. Each failure became evidence, in my own mind, that I was incapable of creating anything worthy. There was a painful gap between the person I imagined myself to be and the person I actually was. That gap gradually pushed me into depression.
But that period also taught me something very important. I began to understand my actual potential—not the potential I imagined, but the abilities I could genuinely develop through effort. I also began to recognize my limitations. That was an important turning point in my life.
Instead of dreaming endlessly about what I might become, I began to design my days. I started spending my time in training myself for things that I was actually capable of doing. I concentrated on work I could practise, improve and eventually succeed in. I stopped measuring myself against an imaginary ideal and began measuring myself against what I had achieved the previous day.
Then something wonderful happened. I began to have small victories.
They were not spectacular achievements. They were very small successes, but they gave me confidence. That confidence encouraged me to work more. More work brought more success, and those successes gave me still greater confidence. Slowly, I came out of the circle of failure, self-doubt and depression.
Now I feel that happiness and confidence are often built in this simple way. We do something, we become a little better at it, we achieve something, however small, and that achievement gives us the courage to attempt something more difficult. Life begins moving forward.
My experience has made me feel that one important way out of depression is to return from the world of imagined achievements to the reality of daily action. We have to discover what we can actually do, train ourselves patiently, and allow small successes to accumulate. Instead of waiting to become a great person, we have to learn to accomplish something worthwhile today.
That was how I gradually rebuilt myself. I believe those small victories were the steps that finally led me out of my depression.
K. Rajmohan
