When I’m depressed—I mean really depressed, not “having a bad day” depressed—sometimes, because of the nature of depression, I forget that there’s a reason for pain. I was reminded recently, not by anything in particular, of the fact that as a professor (God willing) I will have enormous opportunities to help shoulder burdens of fresh college kids who don’t think they have a friend in the world.

Whether it’s obscenely penetrating boredom, lack of direction, and the first few circles, all the way down to the lower levels of Inferno (like self-loathing and ambivalence about the goodness of life versus death), I will be able to relate to these students.

But not to students alone. Sometimes I wonder if I’m overlooking opportunities to help my friends and people who have yet to become friends. People trapped within depression are like those who are stuck in a living nightmare: they don’t realize that their negative patterns of thinking are creating a thick psycho-emotional fog through which they will only become more and more afraid through which to step.

Let me share something with you. I remember, not too long ago, when I was overindulging in the tobacco department. I only knew this after the fact. On a cold, dark, lonely night, I suddenly felt overwhelmed and utterly pierced by this feeling of hopelessness. Sometimes, you have these lonely nights, you know, where you wish you had someone with you just to share life with you; but then there are times, at least for some people like myself, where that turns into something utterly horrific, when you stare down the knife-blade of the present into the Void of the Now and cannot find in your mind anyone who might help you ameliorate your destitute condition. It’s a loneliness that cuts to the bone—and if you’re honest, if you’ve experienced this, you know that calling on a friend won’t help it.

That kind of night struck me a while back, and as I sat in the psycholinguistics lab, late at night, the space heater burning my ankles and the rest of me shivering … I succumbed to the “knowledge” that I was utterly alone. I wondered at this and puzzled at it until I realized—I caught myself thinking that a cigarette would help the feeling. Ah, there was the key, as in a lucid dream the dreamer cues himself to become aware of the dream when he sees a particular stimulus.

My case those weeks ago was a very simple one. Mine was primarily organic, something that could be corrected by abstinence, water, sleep, and the realization that, while my anxiety was real, it had become a monster of enormous proportions only because I had been overindulgent in clove cigarettes the week prior.

But what of those for whom this terrible angst is wholly inorganic, as it was for me a few years ago? What of those who think they are truly about to die for want of friends, for want of anyone who loves them? It is incumbent upon the one who has conquered a major bout with depression—or even a mild-to-medium bout, clinically speaking—to share what he or she has learned. But not that only: to share it in a way that is non-obtrusive and, therefore, can actually reach the depressed individual.

See, the thing about professors, and about intellectuals in general, is that we can make the mistake of thinking that with enough knowledge, all things are cured. This is perhaps Socrates’ only, and certainly gravest, mistake, equating knowledge with virtue and happiness; but it is the most pervasive assumption in all of academia. But what the depressed person in your life needs is not a lesson in the way you might teach about Kantian ethics; but rather, understanding, and personal interaction.

A person who has been depressed and has pushed through it has the gift of knowing something that many don’t know—knowing not least how to connect with others in a way that others cannot. When you are depressed, or stressed, or in too deep, you have the opportunity to rejoice not in the depression itself but in what it is teaching you, and what you will be able to teach others, later.

Here’s a secret for you who haven’t experienced this in your own lives: the person in your life who is depressed is so because they’re horrified at what’s making them depressed. Having come through something like it, you who have understood and overcome no longer are (or need be) horrified at the depression itself, as though it were some worrisome, terminal disease, or some wasting sickness out of a Victorian novella. You who have overcome have the power to look the one who is still in the dungeon of his or her own cognition and smile for the overcoming you see in their eyes. Look, pupil to pupil, and let them know that you know, and that they will overcome. This is the way to help someone who has a negative thought pattern that won’t let them go—or that they won’t let go.

Nothing overcomes the isolationist panic like communion with one who understands. If you are presently depressed, take heart and behold with joy: you are granted a gift not many are, to minister to others whose internal siren song drags them beneath the waves, and pull them onto the warm rocks of love.

When I’m depressed—I mean really depressed, not “having a bad day” depressed—sometimes, because of the nature of depression, I forget that there’s a reason for pain. I was reminded recently, not by anything in particular, of the fact that as a professor (God willing) I will have enormous opportunities to help shoulder burdens of fresh college kids who don’t think they have a friend in the world.

Whether it’s obscenely penetrating boredom, lack of direction, and the first few circles, all the way down to the lower levels of Inferno (like self-loathing and ambivalence about the goodness of life versus death), I will be able to relate to these students.

But not to students alone. Sometimes I wonder if I’m overlooking opportunities to help my friends and people who have yet to become friends. People trapped within depression are like those who are stuck in a living nightmare: they don’t realize that their negative patterns of thinking are creating a thick psycho-emotional fog through which they will only become more and more afraid through which to step.

Let me share something with you. I remember, not too long ago, when I was overindulging in the tobacco department. I only knew this after the fact. On a cold, dark, lonely night, I suddenly felt overwhelmed and utterly pierced by this feeling of hopelessness. Sometimes, you have these lonely nights, you know, where you wish you had someone with you just to share life with you; but then there are times, at least for some people like myself, where that turns into something utterly horrific, when you stare down the knife-blade of the present into the Void of the Now and cannot find in your mind anyone who might help you ameliorate your destitute condition. It’s a loneliness that cuts to the bone—and if you’re honest, if you’ve experienced this, you know that calling on a friend won’t help it.

That kind of night struck me a while back, and as I sat in the psycholinguistics lab, late at night, the space heater burning my ankles and the rest of me shivering … I succumbed to the “knowledge” that I was utterly alone. I wondered at this and puzzled at it until I realized—I caught myself thinking that a cigarette would help the feeling. Ah, there was the key, as in a lucid dream the dreamer cues himself to become aware of the dream when he sees a particular stimulus.

My case those weeks ago was a very simple one. Mine was primarily organic, something that could be corrected by abstinence, water, sleep, and the realization that, while my anxiety was real, it had become a monster of enormous proportions only because I had been overindulgent in clove cigarettes the week prior.

But what of those for whom this terrible angst is wholly inorganic, as it was for me a few years ago? What of those who think they are truly about to die for want of friends, for want of anyone who loves them? It is incumbent upon the one who has conquered a major bout with depression—or even a mild-to-medium bout, clinically speaking—to share what he or she has learned. But not that only: to share it in a way that is non-obtrusive and, therefore, can actually reach the depressed individual.

See, the thing about professors, and about intellectuals in general, is that we can make the mistake of thinking that with enough knowledge, all things are cured. This is perhaps Socrates’ only, and certainly gravest, mistake, equating knowledge with virtue and happiness; but it is the most pervasive assumption in all of academia. But what the depressed person in your life needs is not a lesson in the way you might teach about Kantian ethics; but rather, understanding, and personal interaction.

A person who has been depressed and has pushed through it has the gift of knowing something that many don’t know—knowing not least how to connect with others in a way that others cannot. When you are depressed, or stressed, or in too deep, you have the opportunity to rejoice not in the depression itself but in what it is teaching you, and what you will be able to teach others, later.

Here’s a secret for you who haven’t experienced this in your own lives: the person in your life who is depressed is so because they’re horrified at what’s making them depressed. Having come through something like it, you who have understood and overcome no longer are (or need be) horrified at the depression itself, as though it were some worrisome, terminal disease, or some wasting sickness out of a Victorian novella. You who have overcome have the power to look the one who is still in the dungeon of his or her own cognition and smile for the overcoming you see in their eyes. Look, pupil to pupil, and let them know that you know, and that they will overcome. This is the way to help someone who has a negative thought pattern that won’t let them go—or that they won’t let go.

Nothing overcomes the isolationist panic like communion with one who understands. If you are presently depressed, take heart and behold with joy: you are granted a gift not many are, to minister to others whose internal siren song drags them beneath the waves, and pull them onto the warm rocks of love.