Such a Fucking Useless Saddo

You are such a fucking useless saddo.

It's a good sound line of trochaic pentameter. It has the pleasing property of pentameter that, if you walk in time with it, the lines alternate which foot they begin on. So it feels almost like a waltz rhythm.

You are such a fucking useless saddo, left, you are such a fucking useless saddo, right, you are such a fucking useless saddo, left, you are such a fucking useless saddo, right. In 4/4 time no doubt the mind would at some point get bored; but this rhythm will keep it going for quite a long walk.

An English friend remarked a couple weeks ago that I was a bit of a saddo. I was a little worried that it might mean "sadistic," but it turns out that it simply means pathetic. "Socially-incompetent geekiness as well as general, um, sadness and inadequacy," she explained, when I asked for a definition.

I realized today that I made a stupid error at work, omitted to do something on December 31st, which will have tax consequences for a member of the board. A more stupid and visible error could not well be made. So this little mantra began chanting itself in my brain.

There are several interesting things about this earworm. One is that, in the first flush of anger, my whole person participated in it with a kind of joy. As I got ready for the day, banging doors and slamming drawers, there seemed to be no part of me that wasn't savagely, exultantly chanting it. It wasn't until I was a half-mile down the street, walking under my umbrella in the rain, that mild dissenters began to appear. "Granted," one said, "that you are fucking useless saddo, in what way is that your fault?" Another said, "By repeating this, you're storing up suffering for yourself and others. You know that's true." And a third said, "Shantideva, you know, says: wait."

My friend thought I should want not to be a saddo, as I understood it, because, as a saddo, I was unhappy. I don't know. I usually find discussions of happiness slippery and unsatisfactory. Most of the time, I really don't know what people are talking about. What's the subject of discussion? Happy compared to what? How do I know that my limited capacity for happiness isn't maxed out already? It simply comes and goes, in its own rhythm. The set-points shift according to my circumstances, but over the course of week it all pretty much evens out. I'm going to be happy for a certain amount of time and unhappy for a certain amount of time. That's just how it works: that's the basic design of human consciousness. I can no more alter it than I can sprout a third arm.

There is, maybe, a different kind of happiness, one without set points. People whose discernment I respect think so. There is wordly happiness, they say, and that indeed just rises and falls, in an irregular but inevitable rhythm. But there is also spiritual happiness, which you can view as either negatively, as freeing yourself of the burdens of ego, or postively, as experiencing joyful communion. Well. Maybe so. I have a hard time picturing what wordly unhappiness in the midst of joyful communion would look like, but it's not an obvious impossibility, to me. It might be like the experience I've had, when I've been meditating a lot, of of having the physical sensations of depression without the usual concomitant hamster-wheel of depressed ideation. There's the sense of being borne down upon by a huge weight, the difficulty in initiating movement, the sense of being unable to take a full breath, but the bitterness, the self-blame, the endless rehearsals of bleak futures, are not there. It's okay. The depression is physically present, but I'm not invested in it.

So maybe it's something like that. I'm not ruling it out.

But anyway, I'm going back on the bupropion. The last week has been an experiment in not taking the drugs. It's been interesting, and a little disheartening, to see how much of the past resurfaced. I'm not strong enough, even with work I love and am suited for, even with a regular meditation practice, to get the upper hand of depression without the medicine.

It would have been a hard week anyway, of course, with so little privacy, and the stress of having too much to do at the Foundation, and the holiday slow-down in massage business. But that just made it a good test. If I could have sailed through it, I'd have known for sure that I could do without the meds. But not yet, I guess. I'm not sure how many multi-hour sessions of a voice chanting "you are such a fucking useless saddo" inside my head I could weather, without permanent damage to myself and to those dear to me. If the voice motivated me to change anything, that would be different; but those of you who know depression will be able to verify that it does nothing of the sort. It insists that saddo-hood is my perpetual, inevitable, and richly-deserved condition, for ever and ever, in the sight of God and men, amen.

I hope someday to be able to do without the meds. But if I can't, it's okay. Maybe next life.