One More Light

Who cares if one more light goes out?

In a sky of a million stars

It flickers, flickers

Who cares when someone's time runs out?

If a moment is all we are

We're quicker, quicker

Who cares if one more light goes out?

Well I do

One More Light - Linkin Park

Hey brothers and sisters. Tonight I am going to talk to you about the dreaded topic of depression. As always, I come to you not as an expert but as someone who continually faces and overcomes the struggles he speaks about. Have I struggled with depression? Of course. Have I conquered it once and for all, no. My aim in writing to you is to show you how I view depression and how I fight it whenever it comes upon me. I hope you enjoy the read.

Should've stayed, were there signs, I ignored?

Can I help you, not to hurt, anymore?

 First of all, depression in my view is not a mental illness as some claim it is. It is a part of our lives which we ordinarily do not wish to see. How do I mean? A coin has two sides. Day and night are part of the same cycle. The night may indeed be dark and there may be many terrors but without the night, day loses meaning, it loses value. King Solomon once said, "Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us." To be clear, sorrow is not depression but it often leads to it. 

I would like to debunk the myth of depressed people being "mentally ill", to me this is a false innuendo especially employed in situations where a mentally deranged person performs an outrageous act such as a mass shooting. In such cases, when people have trouble understanding why certain people, hitherto unsuspected of being capable of performing such heinous acts, end up perpetrating them; the use of the phrase is employed. You see what I mean? There is a great misuse of the term, "mentally ill" and the trouble is, it leads to ostracism for those who are actually depressed, therefore making such people unlikely to ever report or share their struggle with depression with the people who can actually help.

And you're angry, and you should be, it's not fair

Just 'cause you can't see it, doesn't mean it, isn't there

To what can I best compare depression? Depression, is best explained with an anecdote from the famous Sci-Fi series, The Walking Dead. In the TV show, people suddenly become zombies after they are bitten by other zombies and start attacking normal, healthy human beings. It was not until much later in the series when the cast finds out that people did not just become zombies because they were bitten by zombies, rather, everyone was infected by a particular disease and if they died, they would turn into zombies. This is the same way I view depression, or as some scholars would call it, clinical depression. We all have the seeds of depression within us. We all fall prey to it sometimes, whether we show it or not.

As I see it, when depression occurs one often feels sapped of energy, spent, without choice, trapped by circumstance, as if no further help is possible. These feelings are often as a result of the individual having felt frustrated and sad, sometimes due to feelings of loss or abandonment. Women generally handle depression better than men, as they tend to share their problems more. Men on the other hand believe themselves to be the masters of their own destinies. They take the bull by the horns and face it squarely. If a man fails critically at a task he feels is personal to him, he will not share with anyone else. He will turn the problem over in his mind looking for a solution until one is found or until he has no choice but to admit defeat.

This is the most crucial step. In this particular case, if a man faces a problem that he cannot solve and for which he feels he cannot seek help, then only two choices are really available to him, to distract himself until he finds a solution to the problem or depression. It is a mark of pride for a man to fix a problem all by himself and not to complain about it. This is why often men will not let other people know that they are facing something. 

Women on the other hand can sometimes get depressed when they experience the same feelings of entrapment. Such is the case when a highly educated and so-called "empowered" woman is battered by her husband. Usually such women feel embarrassed to admit it and wish for their peers not to know. Sometimes such women are brave enough to speak up about the issue but cannot leave because they fear that their children will be abused physically as well. Especially in the case where the man is a high profile figure, for example a senior police officer.

There are many cases that lead to depression, job loss, cancer, sickness, rape, domestic abuse, constant failure, under appreciation and emotional abuse. The list goes on and on, time and a lack of infinite knowledge on the subject matter bar me from listing all the possible causes of depression. I've been through some of the above, so how did I overcome it?

There is no one size fits all approach to overcoming depression, but here is what I find that works for me:

• Friends - I am a man, I don't talk about most of my problems. Sometimes, I get sad, really sad and the world moves on without me. However, when my friends are around me, we can talk about completely unrelated subjects that can distract even from a while from the darkness inside

Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again...

• Darkness - Sounds controversial right? Depression management experts often say that when feeling depressed, resist the desire to isolate yourself. Well I don't disagree entirely, but I believe you need some time to be completely alone with your thoughts, no matter how dark they are. In the darkness, I isolate myself not just from people, but from objects. I stay away from my phone, my tools, the only thing I sometimes stay near is the bed, so that I can sit on the floor and lean on the bed. Being alone with my thoughts helps. I believe in the "Phoenix mentality" (yeah I totally invented that one). Some call it the "bounce back mentality" but I prefer to call it the Phoenix mentality because I allow myself to feel worse and to have darker thoughts till I break down and then I find my strength in the darkness and I do not leave the darkness until I have a morsel of strength.

When words fail, music speaks...

• Music - As with the case above, I allow myself first to listen to sad or angry music, the music that expresses exactly what I am feeling, what I can't put into words. I like using YouTube for this as it allows me to search for the songs I like easily and quickly, but also because in time it learns what mood I am in and begins to recommend similar songs. In time, I no longer need to select the music, the songs it auto-selects for me end up cheering me up. This is not because YouTube plays the music I love or need to hear, but rather that, by maintaining a certain rhythm or tempo, my mind finds a way to deal with the situation.

I want you to know that there won't always be a light at the end of tunnel and sometimes you will simply not know what to do, or you will just want to end it all. I want to encourage you, the universe is not yet done with you. Godspeed.

Who cares if one more light goes out?

Well I do

As a token of my appreciation for having followed me through this long and arduous article, please find below a link to the playlist I was listening to while writing this article.

I made the playlist as I was writing this article so it only has 15 songs. Once again, enjoy!

The Climb

There's always gonna be another mountain

I'm always gonna wanna make it move

Always gonna be an uphill battle

Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there

Ain't about what's waiting on the other side

It's the climb

The Climb - Miley Cyrus

Happy New Year! Oh wait, I am a little late aren't I? No matter. I'd like to talk to you today about hiking and the lessons that we can draw from being on the hiking trail. Why don't we start with a story. The year was 2018 and I was a strapping young man bursting with dreams and ideas, but not much of a sense of adventure. One day as I was parting with a friend, he casually asked me, "Joe do you hike?" I replied yes with some hesitation despite the fact that I had only hiked once before in my entire life. He asked me if I was ready to attend a hike and I again replied yes. A few weeks later I was on a bus on my way to Naivasha for a hike on 3 hills, all to be done on the same day. It has been a year since then and I am still hiking. Last Saturday, I went for the toughest hike that I have ever attended and these are the lessons that I learned from it.

Hiking requires a goal

In hiking as in life, one requires a clear goal. For a lot of people, their goal in hiking is be fit. For others it is to have fun and still for others it is to meet new people and to travel. Everyone who hikes regularly has a reason as to why they hike and so it is in life. One of the things that everyone needs to be happy is something to do, something meaningful. Goals give us something to pursue, something to work towards, something to focus on and something to apply ourselves to. The feeling of achievement that we experience in reaching these goals reinforces who we are and makes us more confident of pursuing other goals.

Beyond our individual selves, goals unite us with people who have similar goals and allow us to be more effective. Hikers often hike in groups. It is not only more fun to hook up with other people in pursuit of a common passion but it is also immensely rewarding since it allows you to learn a lot of things much faster.

Hiking requires preparation

I once heard of a story in which a bunch of girls showed up for a hike in high heels. Needless to say that this was ill advised. Hiking is not an ordinary day to day activity, it requires some preparation. For one, you need to hydrate for days before the actual hike, this is because the hill will cause you dehydration, dehydration will lead to several issues including; headaches, weakness, dizziness and lower blood pressure. None of this is good on a regular day, on a hike they are especially perilous given the many dangers associated with hiking, such as falling from high points. 

You also need hiking gear including but not limited to a bag to carry the things you will need for the hike, two or more bottles of water, light food, hiking boots and hiking poles. You may need more or less equipment depending on the mountain or hill that you intend to climb.

In life as in hiking, you must prepare yourself adequately in order to pursue your life goals. Good things don't come easy and you must be prepared to pay the price to get to where you want to be. 

You may start together, but you don't finish together

Hiking is every bit a competitive sport as running is. In particular, hiking is a lot like a marathon. You may all start at a common point but as you go along, divisions start to occur. Some people naturally move faster, mostly because they have hiked before and are thus better prepared for it. In the same way, in life there are people who move through certain stages in life faster than others. These people don't always reach the summit or the finish line before everyone else. 

In Hiking as in most marathons, it matters not that you are the first one, it only matters that you finish. 

It's not about the destination, it is about the journey

Success means nothing without the challenge. 

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value...” - Thomas Paine

Oftentimes people curse while they are climbing the mountain. Why? The climb is tough. You fight against gravity, both on the way up and on the way down. You fight the heat and the cold. It might rain or it might be windy. Yes indeed, you might have to climb through treacherous terrain while battling hailstones, I know I have. Such is life. While pursuing your dreams you will encounter hailstorms. You will face adverse conditions when you thought that you were already facing your worst day, again, I have been there.

Have you ever had such a bad year that you thought it couldn't get worse and then it did? Yeah it's not funny at all. 

You will go through things in life which you will not understand while you are going through them 

- Les Brown

When you reach you destination, when you achieve that long time dream, when everything culminates into that one dream that you have always had then it will all make sense. Adversity makes the man, remember that. Therefore, enjoy your journey. If you fall seven times, rise up eight times! The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.

The Higher Your Goal, The Harder It Will Be To Reach It

When we were hiking last weekend, we kept seeing a summit. We would climb hard and reach it, only to be told that it was not the actual summit of the mountain. It took six and a half hours to get to the fifth summit, which was the real summit of the mountain. By then, everything in my body was screaming in pain, but it was nothing compared to my exhaustion. I had never had a hard hike prior to last weekend and this was a tough hike. By the time I made it to the summit, I was dead tired. I collapsed onto a rock and lay there like a dying soldier.

It is important to note here that I had been on other hikes before, most of which had not really bothered me. I have been on marathons to me too. This was different. By the time I was halfway, I was utterly exhausted. It took sheer willpower and lots of encouragement to get to the peak. 

Life goals are much like my experiences hiking, the lower your goal, the easier it is to achieve, but also it is less rewarding. The higher your goal is, the harder it is to reach but also, the greater the reward.

You will make it but not alone

Now I know there are incredibly fit people who can hike the most formidable mountains in Africa in astoundingly short durations, in fact, I have met them. Some of them were at that very hike, both men and women. Can I tell you a secret? Don't judge a book by its cover. There were some short slender ladies on that hike who could carry incredible weights and who completed the hike in record time. It is absolutely shocking how some people can carry the equivalent of half their weight in a backpack and still not struggle to climb a steep mountain.

For me it was different. I weigh two hundred and ten pounds, far more than anyone else at that hike and far beyond the recommended weight of someone my height. I am a strong person and like I mentioned earlier, I have hiked before without straining too much. This was different. I ran out of water much earlier than I expected. I ran out of strength halfway to the top. My body trembled and I became frail. My heart beat erratically. Sometimes my heart pounded furiously, at other times it slowed so much that my whole body was consumed with weakness and I had to sit down or collapse. 

I fell several times. Every part of my body hurt. I reached within several hundred meters of the peak but my body was too weak to continue. I resorted to making ten steps forward then pausing for thirty seconds, sometimes more. It was hard. I had been fighting the voices of doubt for several hours. I had been fighting a strong desire to quit as others had done. I had been fighting to continue but now, my body had had it. It was not simply a question of will, it was also a question of ability. Soon I was making five steps then stopping for two minutes. 

I managed to get within a couple hundred meters of the peak but beyond that I could not continue. A friendly lady kept encouraging me. The two of us were the last ones. She too was suffering just like I was but she had the strength to go on, I did not. She promised not to leave me but said that we had to make it to the summit. I tried but I could not go on. I was now only able to make just three steps, then I had to stop for two minutes to heave and pant. 

My heart was moving so slow I thought I was going to die. Coupled with that, I was fighting the bitter urge to vomit. The ground was muddy and it was hard to move at all. To make matters worse we were at an altitude of nearly 4,000 meters above sea level. I had never been above 2,800 meters above sea level. Even the vegetation was different. The grass protruded well above the ground and concealed the ground beneath, it tripped us many times.

Then the hiking guide showed up. He took my hand and he pulled me forward. With him I could at least take ten steps forward before resting for thirty seconds, again. With him, I made it to the peak. For the final steps to the top of the mountain, I asked him to let me do it alone. He acknowledged my request and released my hand. I leaned on my hiking pole with all my might. My lungs were burning. Every breath felt like it was my last. It was as if I was drowning out of water, it is a hard feeling to describe, panting like an ox but feeling like each breath is hardly enough. I eventually made it to the top and collapsed on a rock.

I was wearing very light clothes but the cold did not bother me, I had made it and I deserved my rest. The hiking instructor woke me up from my sleep and asked me to wear something warm. "If you sleep here like this, you may never wake up," he said. I decided to wear the t-shirt so that I could get back to sleeping. Unfortunately this was not to be. The way down would be just as long as the way up and we had to leave immediately. 

I have seldom been tested the way I was on that mountain but through it I learned a lot more than I can share here, including the kindness of strangers and the capacity of the human body to adapt and endure.

The view is beautiful at the top

In other words, it is worth the pain, it is worth the struggle. Let your dreams guide you to the place your heart calls home.

You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination - Roman Payne

It is my hope that you enjoyed this article. It is also my hope that these goals will guide you in pursuing your life goals. Till next time, stay strong, stay hungry and stay foolish