On Best Friends Day: An Aristotelean Confluence of Events

Aristotle (although I am, by no means an authority here) spoke about the driving process of the universe as the occurrence of impossible probabilities. That is, or at least this is what I take from it, each of us live our distinctly individualized lives because a series of probable events often occur (impossibly) at the same time, therein making similar experiences lived quite differently for different people.

Earlier this week I made plans with my best friend's mom to continue working on an advocacy project related to chronic depression awareness. You may have read elsewhere here that I lost my best friend of over 20 years to a crappy fight with chronic depression, although that is the extent of detail I will share for now. It just so happens that the very day I am planning to do this turns out to be "Best Friends Day." Now, I don't know who makes these days up, but I like them and I just go with it. But I find it all a bit eerie, and it seemed post-worthy.

The thing about chronic depression, for that matter all of mental health, is that it occupies a distinctly different place within our understanding of health. We often minimize mental health problems as if they are somehow optional; at best, mental illness also rarely presents itself in a recognizable way in the sense that a cancer patient (like myself) is easily identified. And depression is also a highly social problem, as it often involves near paralysis on the part of the depressed resulting from perceived, albeit nonexistent, reactions from others. My best friend's mom (who I call mom as well) has a beautifully simplistic way of putting it: "If there is something wrong with your heart, you can get a new one, but if there is something wrong with your brain, you can't get a new one of those." So herein also lies the message of this post: if someone you know is going through depression, take them seriously, and if you care about this issue the way I do, look forward in the future to me sharing some of the results of the advocacy work I'm beginning soon.