WE SHALL NOT CEASE FROM EXPLORATION

AND THE END OF ALL OUR EXPLORING

WILL BE TO ARRIVE WHERE WE HAVE STARTED AND

KNOW THE PLACE FOR THE FIRST TIME

T.S. ELIOT – THE FOUR QUARTETS

Christmas 2001 – these are the quotations I put together at that time which reflects a very dark period in my life; a time when Black Dog resonated through my being.  This year I am so deplete of energy I am unable to gather together the quotations as I usually do for the New Year 2018.  It has been a year of further illness only this time it is breast cancer and over the Christmas period I was having chemotherapy and my mother unexpectedly had a massive stroke on the 23rd December and passing away on the 28th at 5.40 am in the Mater Hospital having been admitted through A&E so I am battling Black Dog again but this time my partner KT of 14 years is here to support me.

My Christmas gift (December 2001)……..I have spent several years reading in my quest to find answers to questions and seeking affirmation that one can be depressed and have a life too.    I really want to assist progress for those who are ‘still victim’s of society’s prejudices’. I have a considerable number of quotations collected now and include some that relate to what I wrote about.

Selection of Quotations chosen December 2001

This provides as apt a description of depression as one can find.

‘It was the onset of a mysterious numbness that crept into my whole being, caused me to want to die, closed down all my connection with the basic ingredients of life, colour, activity, conversation and relationships…I could not feel the wind on my face, the hand that clasped mine, my sister’s death from cancer, the ground under my feet, the meaning of anything I heard or read.  I was alone in the deep dark tunnel and there was no end to it, it seemed I simply sat there – mute, pitiable and wasted’

Sr. Joan , a Franciscan nun quoted in The Pummeled Heart Finding Peace through Pain by Antoinette Bosco 1994

‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’

‘…O Lord send my roots rain’

Gerard Manley Hopkins (Jesuit Priest the poet)

The Pummeled Heart

The writer’s youngest son had manic depression. For 10 years he struggled and apparently coping with his working life and friends – Aged 27 he committed suicide.           The fact is he didn’t heal, in his words (incomplete he wrote)

‘My life is like a Rolls Royce without spark plugs.

It looks great, but it has the hidden flaw that keeps it from running properly’

 What people generally do not realise is that Depression is a physical illness and also is embedded in silence.

‘What is called an reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.’

Camus

“I have always felt terrible pain at the news of a suicide successfully carried out. My heart cries out: But where was your neighbour? Was there no-one to listen to your pain? Did no-one in your environment have an answer to life? Where are the Christians? The suicide tells us that no-one offered anything to live for. The solutions were not worth the effort. Their death is an accusation to us all and a terrible challenge to reach out to others we meet on life’s journey.”

Suffering – The Unwanted Blessing (1990) by: Frances Hogan

‘Pain’ is the root of knowledge’

Simon Weil

‘The Saints state the importance of self knowledge. This is acquired by observing one’s actions, from listening to others, reflecting on our behaviour, by meditating on the word of God and taking counsel from others who have experienced something similar’.

Choose Life – The Two Ways by Frances Hogan

‘What we do not understand, we do not possess’

Goethe

It is now 5 men to every one woman who commit suicide – 40% are men under the age of 30.  Note: the suicide rate rises and falls with alcohol consumption.  Excessive intake of alcohol has implications re. depression

‘Nothing is more powerful than the emptiness from which men shrink’

Chinese Sage – Lao-tzu

‘Kindness in words creates confidence

Kindness in thinking creates profoundness

Kindness in giving creates love’

Lao Tao (16th century)

I can never repay what has been done for me, throughout my period of ill-health – there are too many people and many names or faces I am unable to remember. This quote I must rely on:

‘One can never pay in gratitude

One can only pay in kind

Somewhere else in life

Thanksgiving is about passing it on.’

Anne Morrow Lindberg

Conclusion 2001 and now 17 years later I include these quotes once more; I have met many more good people but the foregoing quote is still one of the most important.

2018

Did youtube exist in 2001? I am going to assume it didn’t and I am going to select this song by Pete Seeger “Where have all the flowers gone…” for inclusion in this years quotations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y2SIIeqy34

Bibliotherapy or just simply reading quotations can lift your mood enough to carry you through.  I recommend Viktor E. Frankl.

‘We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way’.

Michelle Clarke

Change of address notification:  This was December 2001 when I moved house yet again.

No longer exist

Mobile phone: 086-8922592                 Text Only. I do not answer or make phone calls.

Email: miclarke@gofree.indigo.ie