[zcw100]

Every time I read something like this I always think they have the causality backward which I think that anyone who has ever suffered from depression can attest to. The food doesn't make you happy, you're predisposed to finding happiness. You wouldn't say that bad food makes you unhappy would you? Disappointed maybe but under normal circumstances it wouldn't cause unhappiness. If you were depressed it might, and you would find it difficult to find happiness in even good food.

Everyone has heard the story of the person who toils under great hardship and still manages to find joy in life. That's sort of the opposite of depression and it isn't necessarily good. People who are content to toil in hardship might find it difficult to motivate themselves to change their situation. It's a balance between the internal and external. Even the definition of what is good food is malleable. The chef or food critic might be repulsed by Taco Bell while someone else might enjoy every bite.

[JKCalhoun]

Perhaps it is in part the process of making your own food that is also therapeutic.

I think we fill our days with positive and negative "karma" all the time and are unaware of it, losing clarity of even the bad karma as so much background noise.

Perhaps it is only in times of crisis that we are specifically tuned to see the accumulative effect of the negative karma, can see it for what it is. I feel that way myself anyway — and then try to redouble my efforts going forward of pushing away those detrimental influences.

[supernovae]

I find this interesting because there really is no opposite of depression besides not being depressed.

I've experienced death of loved ones, loss of job, homelessness, mountains of debt, abuse and I've experienced a huge range of emotions through all of that - yet, I've never attributed it to depression.

Most people I know who express they suffer from depression actually suffer from anger.. (and for valid reasons)

[Thursday24]

Agree with this. The logic behind this is simple. The human being is part of the universe, hence subject to causation & perceived chance. The human being doesn't get to "choose" the architecture of the body at birth, no choice in breathing, the eyes are going to blink and so on. And the idea of "volition" goes out of the window the moment we ask a question such as: "where did this prior thought come from?" The universe is a massive machine and men and women are little machines operating in service to the larger whole. Pain, pleasure, happiness and depression are universal mechanisms which allow totality to function, but human beings in general tend to construct a personal narrative. Once one fully accepts causation, then the struggle goes away little by little, since the "personal story" dissipates, and only "universal law in motion" remains.