Yesterday I felt extremely depressed, to the point of feeling a little suicidal. I felt hopeless, pessimistic, afraid, empty, lonely, alone. I went to a park and slept on the grass in the sunshine. Around me were many homeless people also sleeping in the park. I felt homeless myself. When I woke up I rode my bike through the park. I was stopped by police and told I was not allowed to ride my bike in the park. I felt resentful and a little defiant. I was going slowly, I was not a danger to anyone. Why couldn't they have said, "We just wanted to let you know that, officially speaking, no bike riding is allowed in this park anymore. We had a few problems with people riding too fast and scaring people and sometimes hitting them, so someone decided not to allow any bikes at all. We think that is a bit extreme, so we use our judgment in enforcing this rule. We can see that you are not a danger to anyone, so thank you for being careful and considerate of others. Please keep being careful and riding slowly as you have been. Thanks." If they would have said that I would have felt appreciative, not resentful. I would have felt cooperative, not defiant. Maybe I will send this to someone in the police department. That is an amusing thought. I wonder what they would do. I feel curious. I feel curious about a lot of things. Too many things to investigate all of them. I wish I had some helpers so I could say, "Take this letter to the police and see what they say. See if you can find out why they passed this law. What triggered it. And how to overturn it."

But back to the topic of depression. Yesterday I felt like giving up. I know that is not a feeling word. It is not in line with my own definition of emotional literacy - which is about expressing feelings with three word sentences beginning with "I feel....". Giving up = surrendering. Or something close to it. But surrendering has more of a military connotation. I am not in war. Not exactly. But often I do feel like I am fighting a battle. So the feeling word might be "embattled." Or I could say I feel at war. I don't want to feel at war. I want to feel at peace. Some days it seems I am indeed fighting a losing battle. A hopeless cause. Or several causes.

I want people to stop killing each other. I want parents to stop killing and hurting their children. I want parents and teachers to stop making teenagers want to kill themselves. I want society to value feelings. Especially the feelings of the young. I want people to listen to people who don't have much of a voice, especially children and teens. I want to help give these people a voice, by teaching them the names of their feelings, by teaching them that their feelings matter, that their feelings represent their needs. I want to put their stories on the Internet for the whole world to read and learn from. I want to help them feel more powerful and less powerless.

I feel alone in this "battle." To follow my own advice I can see that when I feel alone it means I need some connections with others. I don't have many connections with others who share my feelings and beliefs. Perhaps this is my own fault. There must be others out there. I have spent a lot of time alone, though. A lot of time developing my own ideas.

I am in South Africa right now, by the way. I could write a chapter or two about that. Being here, seeing the poverty, learning more about Nelson Mandela, talking to homeless children, touching them, buying them some food, talking to school teachers, social workers, teenagers, children, cleaning ladies, backpackers searching for themselves -- it has all part of my own education and growth. I have also done some reading. I learned about some South African writers and consultants in the field of emotional intelligence, or at least who claim to be. I was very pleased with one workbook I saw, the "Emotional Intelligence Workbook," by Ronel Le Roux and Rina De Klerk. Another book though, only claimed to be about emotional intelligence. (See ei_ed4) From seeing the EI workbook and seeing that my name was used twice in the references (same as my friend Dan Goleman, lol), I feel encouraged and slightly less alone. I also feel slightly less alone after meeting a primary school headmaster/principal and a teacher who valued my ideas and who seem to be on a similar path. But I still feel mostly alone. So I need to make more connections. I feel unsupported, so I need to find more people who support my work.

I also feel unhelpful, uninfluential, unrecognized, unappreciated. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me again. Maybe those feelings are not based on reality. Maybe I am more helpful, influential etc.than I feel. Surely so. Why, then, do I feel so low at times? I think it is the same reason a brilliant teenager feels stupid. Our parents teach us how to feel about ourselves. This is probably the most important teaching they do in our lives. My parents taught me not to feel good about myself. They taught me to unworthy, inadequate, afraid, unlovable. They also taught me to feel cynical, skeptical, pessimistic, critical, judgmental. They taught me the world is a dangerous place and people can't be trusted. But all of their teaching goes against my own true nature. I realize this now. But it has taken me years and years of struggling to try to overcome their teaching- to unlearn what they taught me and try to replace it with something more in line with reality and with my own core feelings. These core feelings keep rising up.

Today is a good example. After feeling so depressed, so lifeless yesterday, I woke up early - at 4 am - feeling refreshed and optimistic. I had a head full of new ideas. While just the other day I felt hatred and resentment about one situation in particular, today those feelings somehow disappeared. While just the other day I didn't think I could ever feel forgiving towards someone who has been hurting a person I care about deeply, today I feel free to forgive and to accept their mistakes and I feel more open to any future possibilities rather than feeling insistent on getting my own way. In other words, I feel more detached from the outcome, but also more optimistic a positive outcome can be reached.

I also woke up trusting my own mind. I have come to trust it more and more. My mind though, has shown me time and time again it can be counted on when given time. Yesterday I did not consciously think "It is okay to be depressed. I've been depressed before. I just need to let this depression serve its purpose and be open to whatever comes out of it." Nor did I remember the day that I sat in my car in Canada and watched myself come out of a depression with new ideas and new energy. But I did allow myself to be depressed without telling myself I shouldn't feel the way I did.

Yesterday I really thought that if I died, no one would notice and no one would care, except for perhaps two people I have never even met in person. I didn't see much difference between myself and the homeless people around me. I still don't actually. Now I wonder, who am I to think that I have anything more to offer, anything more of value to say than they do?

See, I was always taught to think that my ideas had no value. My opinion didn't matter. No one in my family listened to me. And I don't believe I am being dramatic when I say that. I had two parents and five older brothers and sisters. Seven people who all wanted to tell me how to run my life. I can't remember one time before about age 21 that anyone in my family sat down and listened to me for more than 30 seconds (and there have been very few times since then). Maybe there were more such times, but none come to mind. So now I have a big need to talk, to express myself, to be heard, to be listened to. The need is so intense that it scares many people away. I shout sometimes. I swear sometimes. I say things which are not in my own best interest, just out of extreme frustration. The frustration is painful actually. Many people shout when they are in pain. This is natural, or so I believe. Yet children are taught to be quiet. Even when they are crying, some of them are told to stop crying. In the next entry I will talk about her. The entry is called Lost and Afraid to Start Searching.

The other day I met one of these people. (see "Depression") When she was younger she was told, "Oh, stop your crying. Go wash your face and cheer up." She is lost now. At age 23 she is literally lost. She told me she came to South Africa to find herself but she isn't any closer to that then when she left. She doesn't know who she is or what her needs are. She drinks, smokes, distracts herself. The prospect of facing her pain is itself so painful she can not begin the journey. This is one reason I felt depressed yesterday. I have been unable to help her. I saw her again this morning. She had been up all night smoking and drinking. The other day she slept in the same bed as her boyfriend's best friend. Today she was surrounded by about 6 people, also all smoking and drinking, and all male. Her boyfriend is gone now, she feels empty without him. She is afraid of me because I ask questions which are too hard for her to think about. I showed her my book and suggested she read the chapter on parenting. She gave it back to me telling me it was just to hard to read. She said, "Once I start thinking about things, I can't stop." I feel frustrated that I can't help her, that she is hurting her body, wasting money, contributing to the alcohol and tobacco industries. The other day I told her she was special. I had a tear in my eye as I said it. I saw how special she was, but she can't see it. She denied it. Her parents couldn't see it. They don't even know her. The other day she spoke to her father. He suggested she try to get a job in a golf club, working at the bar. He said she would meet a lot of rich people. Money and appearances are important to her parents. They sent her to a boarding school so she could get educated and become a member of their same social class. But she resented being sent there. She felt unwanted when they sent her away. She started cutting herself at age 11. She is still cutting herself. She thinks she always will.

It hurts me to see an intelligent person like her hurting herself. Her parents hurt her while she was living with them. Now she has taken over the job. She is more self-aware than they are. At least she is aware that it is important to find herself. At least she is aware that her parents have failed her. She told me that they recently wanted her to explain why she was acting the way she was towards them. They could sense her bitterness towards them. She told them that they had missed their chance to talk to her. She said she wasn't going to start trying to explain things to them at age 23. I felt sad for her and sad for her parents when I heard this.

When I was thinking about my own depression yesterday, I thought of what it must be like to be a depressed teen. Because I have my freedom I can go lay in the sun with the homeless people for as long as I need to. I can go back to my room in the hostel and sleep on my bed for as long as I need. A teenager though is forced to go to school. I can hardly even begin to imagine what it must be like to be depressed, to feel alone, to feel empty and yet be surrounded by people telling you what to do and how to feel. I only guess what it must be like to have teachers and saying things like "Don't think so much. Stop looking out the window. Don't be so depressed. Cheer up. Smile. Stop being so melancholy. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Get to work. Pay attention. Answer the question. Do your assignment. Get focussed. Get back on task."

These are the same kinds of things which I see happening in primary schools. The instructions on how to behave and how to feel are very, very similar. I spent a few days visiting a primary school recently and I was reminded what that environment is like and how it can literally destroy some children. As I learn more about what schools are like and what it is like to be an intelligent, sensitive, aware, over-controlled, invalidated and underestimated child, I understand more clearly why so many teens are depressed and suicidal.

Schools, principals and teachers -- generally speaking -- do not value individual needs. For example, what if a child or a teen were to say, "I need to be alone. I feel depressed and claustrophobic"? How would most adults in a school environment handle that? But to back up, how likely is it that a child or teenager would be able to have this kind of self-awareness and this kind of self-assertiveness? Where is self-awareness and self-assertiveness taught? When it is it taught? And is the school environment set up to provide a quiet place, a safe place for a child or teen to go and simply be alone for awhile? Would the adults in control allow the person to decide how long is long enough before they are ready to come back and join the group?

I feel so sorry for the people who need time and space to be alone, just as I needed it yesterday, yet who do not have the freedom nor sufficient control over their own lives to fill these needs. I relate to these people. I want to help them. I believe they are the emotional leaders and emotional geniuses. I believe we can all benefit from allowing them to feel their feelings, to experience them, to process them on their own schedules. Am I the only one who shares this belief? Sometimes it feels like I am. I feel alone, in other words. And this is one of the reasons I feel depressed. But at least I am aware of it. And this kind of self-awareness is something I want to see taught in schools. I also want schools to be redesigned so teens can be free to be themselves emotionally, including being depressed or being able to cry when they need to. Right now most teens are too afraid to cry. They are afraid others will judge them, mock them, shame them, humiliate and reject them. In my speech to a primary school the other day I encouraged the children to cry more. Most children learn early on that it is weak to cry. Just as most teens learn that there is something wrong with them if they are depressed.

I believe, though, there are valid reasons we cry and valid reasons we are depressed. Let's encourage children and teens to feel their feelings, value their feelings and learn from them.This is not something which is taught in most schools. Not yet anyhow. But it might just be the single most important thing we can teach them.